Do collaborations help the artisan?
Fashion brands ‘putting the karigar first’ has become a big flex, but the artisans are still not given their due
On a humid Thursday last week, several celebrities, industrialists, journalists, content creators and editor-influencers (it’s a thing now) gathered on the lawns of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya for an event the Unesco World Heritage site had not seen in decades: a fashion show.
As soon as the music started, out walked a model in a sharply tailored blazer with matching boot-cut trousers, opening the fashion showcase that marked 15 years of couture brand Jade, known for blending India’s traditional art and craft traditions with high fashion. That first look, much like the 79 others, was a paean to India and its artisans—the pieces were made as part of Jade’s yearlong initiative, Grassroot Artisans Project, where the brand founders, Monica Shah and Karishma Swali, worked with six craft clusters across the country to make the traditional techniques more suitable for a global palate.
In Telangana’s Pochampally, for instance, they worked with more than 10 artisans over six months, upskilling them to twist threads in a way that made ikat strong enough to turn into trousers. Further south, in Salem, Tamil Nadu, along with the artisans, they worked to make softer, “liquid” Kanjivaram: they changed the grainage and removed the starch in the material. The focus was not on manipulation of the craft, but in the way it was utilised—something that was evident as soon as the show started.
It was easy to imagine someone flaunting the white boot-cut trousers, made from denim sourced from Panipat, Haryana, and embellished with Bholpur’s kantha work, in a Paris restaurant. Or, being asked about the soof patch embroidered on the back of the white jacket by artisans in Gujarat’s Palanpur, at a London party. Each of the 80 pieces was global, with an India signature.
At its heart, the show, titled Legacy Of Deft Hands, served yet another reminder of what has long been known: Indian artisans have the skills to create work that can be as much part of daily wear as haute couture around the world, and all they need is guidance of homegrown designers to create global designs.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the 2 May show was a question: How do these collaborations help the artisan?
“Since I started work 15 years ago, I’ve been making the same motifs,” Rajrupa Mondal, 49, tells me in Hindi, over a call. A textile designer from West Bengal’s Bholpur city, Mondal has been working on the wax-resist dyeing technique of batik for the past 15 years. For the past year, she’s been working with Shah as part of the Grassroot project. “Now, I am learning different designs; they are more fun and modern. If more young people wear our work, we will get more recognition.” As part of the Grassroot initiative, Jade pays the weavers by the metre.
Artisans, or the karigars, have long remained faceless and voiceless, restricted to the “manufacturing” side of fashion. Things started to take a turn last year after the India Dior show that put the Indian artisan in the spotlight. (The show was a tie-up between the French luxury brand and the Mumbai-based Chanakya atelier, where Jade’s Swali is the artistic director.) Talking about artisans and their work became an easy way to gain social currency.
In doing so, artisanal collaborations have become a big flex for fashion brands, elevating them from being seen as purely commercial ventures. To flex further, designers have started talking about recognising the artisans as equal partners, raising their profiles and making them visible to more global audiences. In the process, the designers bring innovation to the craft, taking it to the next level and the next generation.
“Artisans need to feel pride in their work,” says Shah, who is working with 200-odd artisans in craft clusters in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan and West Bengal. “A few months ago, an artisan from Barmer came to one of our stores and recognised the shawl he had made from 200 other identical shawls. Craft has never been just about money for them; it’s an extension of their identity. That’s why we add names of master weavers in our limited-edition pieces.”
Such efforts bring a semblance of permanence to the craft, besides offering much-needed validation to the artisan. But what makes a successful artisanal collaboration? “You can’t look at the artisans with patronising eyes,” says Ramesh Menon, the driving force behind Kochi-based nonprofit Save The Loom, which works with Khadi and handloom weavers in Kerala and Bengal to produce hand-spun, handwoven textiles. Each of their products has a hand-stitched label to credit the weaver.
“Whenever there is a collaboration, the basic premise remains whether it will help the artisans and the craft grow. Plus, karigars need to be given better wages.”
That’s what Varanasi’s Haji Haseen Mohammed, 60, demanded when I asked him what artisans want. He’s a fourth generation master weaver and a recipient of a National Award for manufacturing kinkhab, saris and Tibetan brocade. “The designers give us their design on paper and then we spend months on one piece of cloth and they put their own name on it. How is that fair?” he asks. “We are paid as much as those who are working on powerlooms (though our work is more labourintensive and creative). That’s why youngsters are moving to powerlooms. The only way to convince them (to continue with handloom weaving) is giving them recognition and money.” He says handloom weavers in and around Varanasi earn about ₹15,000 a month.
Fair compensation and recognition are the two pillars of an artisanal collaboration. In 1995-96, India had over six million people working in the handloom sector, which dropped to 4.33 million in 2009-10. By the last census in 2019, the number was 3.52 million, including 2.67 million weavers. Over 92% weavers make less than ₹10,000 a month, shows the All India Handloom Census. West Bengal’s Somnath Guin, who works with 80 weavers in Islampur, helping them in the design process and quality check, puts a weaver’s earnings at ₹15,000-20,000 a month.
Mondal wasn’t keen to share how much she earns but says both her brothers, aged 25 and 37, are doing the same work.
What they all agreed on was the need for regular work—the fourth and lesser discussed point of a successful artisanal collaboration. Often, as moodboards and seasons change, designers move from one cluster of artisans to another.
As designer Rina Singh, founder of the textile-first brand Ekà that works with over 1,000 artisans across India, says, “Moving from cluster to cluster with every collection is not a good practice. You can’t first work with them and then abandon them for business interests.”
With fashion houses working on budgets to serve trend-thirsty consumers, is it even possible to continue working with the same crafts clusters for long? “Yes, if you have the right intent. You need to work at least for four-five seasons with them (artisans), before moving on,” says Singh.
Jade’s Shah has no plans of moving away from the six clusters she’s working with anytime soon. In fact, she’s adding Himachal Pradesh’s Sholtu and Karnataka’s Vijayanagara as part of a collaboration with JSW Foundation, the social development arm of business house JSW Group that supported the 2 May show, along with the Rotary Club of Mumbai. “The idea is to integrate these heritage designs in Indian luxury couture collections as well as showcase them on the global fashion stage,” says Sangita Jindal, chair of JSW Foundation.
That would be the ideal flex—getting to a point of showcasing India’s legacy, with designers and artisans enjoying equal spotlight, both off and on the stage.