A Varicoloured Delight

With one of his most recent projects, award-winning designer Gaurang Shah reaffirms that fashion and art, indeed, emerge from the same core. Anurima Das writes.

- Anurima Das

Designer Gaurang Shah and his team recreated 30 paintings of Raja Ravi Varma on saris. Nearly 600 shades of yarn and natural-dye specialists were required to complete this project. To begin with, samples of yarn were developed, and these ranged from fluorescent greens to lilacs, peachy pinks to sea blues—hues that one normally does not come across in natural dyes. Each colour was brought to life through many stages of development—applying the dye, dipping the yarn in alum and drying, then applying another colour that neutralises the tone, and dipping it once more in alum.

This project, conceived in collaboration with the Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, began with Gaurang procuring more than 50 of the painter’s lithographs. All the weaving was done on khadi saris, which is hoped to be showcased in different museums worldwide.

NARRATING STORIES

The chosen paintings fall under three categories—women, gods and goddesses, and stories. Each of the paintings was done in jamdani. When talking about the challenging aspect of the work, Gaurang says, “Raja Ravi Varma used only natural colours for his paintings, in combinations of four primary colours. We opted to weave our saris with natural dyes to preserve the ethos. 600 shades and hues of naturally dyed, textured silk yarns were developed to lend a 3D effect while recreating the paintings in jamdani weaves. Junaid Khatri, the master craftsman from Kutch, with his deep knowledge of natural dyes, took up this challenge and used unconventional methods to create colours that were never applied before.”