FARM TO FASHION

INDIA IS ON THE WAY TO DRESSING THE WORLD ONCE AGAIN. HERE WE PRESENT THE STORY OF FIVE INTERNATIONAL OUTFITS WHOSE ROOTS LIE IN INDIAN VILLAGES

- BY NAMRATA ZAKARIA

According to recorded history, clothing in India has been hand-spun, dyed and handwoven right up to the Indus Valley Civilisation, over 3,000 years before Christ. The Greek historian Herodotus described Indian cotton as “a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness”. Trade routes by land and by sea created a great cultural exchange between India, China, Central Asia and Europe. In the early 17th century the East India Company began taking India’s local produce, primarily raw cotton, and industrialise it into cloth that it sold to the rest of the world, including India. At the time, Indian cotton dressed 90 per cent of the world.

Mahatma Gandhi took us back to our ancient roots of spinning, weaving and dyeing our own cloth instead of buying back from the British what they stole from us. Gandhi famously said, “If the village perishes, India perishes.”

Today, India’s fashion industry is growing and thriving thanks to rural enterprise. The story of Indian fashion is the story of our village crafts. India is on its way to dressing the world once again. And here are five examples of international outfits whose roots can be traced to the villages where they were made.

Bargachia and Bandpur, Bengal

ALL EYES WERE on American movie star Zendaya when she came to India in April 2023 for the launch of the ‘India in Fashion’ exhibition that inaugurated the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai. Designed by Rahul Mishra and custom-made for the actor, the blue sari she wore featured three-dimensional embroidery. It was then tailored to look like a skirt with a trail and a veil over one shoulder, almost like a gown with a long scarf. It became one of the most modern and easy to wear iterations of the sari. The embroidery featured stars in a dark sky, and the hem had beautiful fauna—tigers, squirrels, flamingos—looking up at the sky.