Reimagining THE DRAPE
As muse and inspiration, the sari is open to a million interpretations; the idea is to keep Indian heritage alive through age-old forms.
YEARS AGO, WHEN
we had started Ensemble, the first thing people would ask for was embroidery. While embroidery has reached fantastic heights in India and the rest of the world—not just in terms of fashion but also as a means to create jobs for our exquisitely talented karigars— it is not what draws me to India as a fashion inspiration. What fascinates me far more is the way people drape fabric in different parts of the country. If time travel was a reality and one landed up in some unknown corner of the country 200 years ago, one would still be able to tell where they are by the way people draped their fabrics. For instance, if three men were given the same yardage of cloth, they would each drape their bottoms, scarves and turbans in a delightfully unique fashion. The only tailoring on their ensemble would be the shirt or the kediu (kurta). In Kutch, even today, women tuck twenty metres of cloth into a basic nadapatti (a belt) to fashion a ghaghra with no stitching involved. Unfortunately, the lack of documentation has led to the loss of this beautiful art, because unlike embroidery which stays forever, the style of draping textiles changes with every generation. That’s the beauty and the impossibility of textiles. The drape, for me, is unique. If you walked into a room with a hundred people wearing the same sari, it could appear draped in a hundred different ways as each body will contour differently.
So, to preserve the magic of these drapes designers started doing structured drapes. Since it is not something that lends itself to heavy embroidery, it discouraged a lot of designers. Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla did some work with drapes, Antaragni played with it in their menswear collections and a number of others explored the traditional form as well but there was no move to go mainstream. I believe that we are going back to our roots to explore the drape form in much simpler, more flattering ways. Draping is a beautiful part of our fashion vocabulary that we are unfortunately losing. Unlike the kimono, which everyone wears the same way, the sari is a unique garment. Apart from
individual styles, every region has its unique way of tying the sari— the Gujaratis with their seedha pallu, the nonpleated Bengali style; the Coorgis without a blouse and the Nauvari draped through the legs.
There has always been limited information about structured draping and we didn’t know how to translate it into a free standing garment. Growing up in south Mumbai, I was around a lot of textile. I’ve always been very attracted to the drape form. My favourite designers growing up were Ungaro and Christian Dior. In the 40s and 50s, Dior did a lot of draping and he mastered the art of pleating, draping and ruching. Every designer in the world has been inspired by the sari because it’s open to a million interpretations. The idea is to keep Indian heritage alive through age-old forms. So while designers today continue to experiment with western silhouettes, the drape has made a big impact and is popular with many designers, including me, who see it as an inspiration; something to reinterpret to suit the modern fantasy and lifestyle.