Weaving a story of life

Known for being unique works of craftsmanship, handlooms cry for more than just a drape, writes Surekha Kadapa-Bose

This is the sixth year when the National Handloom Day was celebrated this month as a happy day and a much-needed acknowledgement for the handloom sector. But this should also have been a day when a lot of introspection needed to be done to question ourselves whether we as consumers are doing enough to protect and encourage this sector which till the beginning of this century, employed some 63 lakh weavers and its allied workers, the second-highest after the agriculture sector.

The 2011 census showed that the numbers had dwindled to 43.31 lakh weavers. Nearly 87 per cent of this number live in villages with women forming more than 70 per cent of the sector earning a paltry sum of Rs 50 to Rs 75 for weaving for more than six hours a day.

It’s the apathy of consumers which is driving this sector to dwindle. At the beginning of this century, very few youngsters between the age of 15 and 25 years — who are the highest consumers of fashion apparel — were even aware of handloom products. For a majority of them, it was a fabric worn by their grandparents especially in the pre-Independence days or as an ethnic fashion wear worn by the rich older women. Adding to their ignorance of understanding the beauty of the uneven weave of hand
woven earthy coloured fabric was the onslaught of power looms’ unflawed vibrantly coloured fabric.

Chanderi and Jamdani weaves by Vaishali Shadangule

Making the connect

The competition was between a fabric with natural fibres like pure cotton, linen, silk against an easily available man-made, more colourful fabric with artificial polyester, rayon yarns etc. Since the turn of the last decade, from 2010 onwards, things slowly started improving with many fashion houses, designers and even Fashion Weeks introducing and talking about handloom fabric. In fact, since 2015, popular Fashion Weeks started setting aside an entire day in the five days week event only for handloom collections by different fashion designers. The media, along with the marketing team of the designers also stepped in, and the advertisement department joined hands with glamorous models to display handloom apparel.

Many apparel designers like Mumbai-based Anavila Misra, Vaishali Shadangule, Anita Dongre, Bengaluru-based Deepika Govind, Kochi-based Sreejit Jeevan, Shalini James, Indu Menon, Delhi-based Sanjay Garg, Aneeth Arora, Meghalaya-based Daniel Syiem and many others spread all over the country design only with handloom fabric. They rediscovered the beauty of handloom fabric and moved away from the filmy-style blingy and vibrant-hued fashion apparel.

The plus point of designers stepping in was the introduction of Western attire using handwoven fabric. Previously, the handloom section was restricted to only sarees. This also brought in many film stars, celebrities sporting these designs which added to the wow factor of the fabric which in turn managed to make handloom fabric a talking point among collegians. The popularity also increased with regular exhibitions of handloom products in almost all cities of India.

Designers entered homes of weavers. Many like Vaishali, Anavila and Anita live for weeks with the weavers in their villages to interact with them and make them understand the need to change their technique to suit the modern times. They work with weavers, weaver clusters, teach them to experiment by changing the width and length of the loom to get the fabric of different dimensions.

“The changed feature of woven fabric helps in creating Western-style clothing without wasting any hard-worked fabric,’’ says Vaishali who is famous for working with Chanderi, Jamdani and Dharwad Khun weaving clusters.

Linen creations by Anavila Misra

Diversifying designs

Not only new dimensions of the loom, but designers also introduced new motifs, prints to be incorporated besides the traditional ones which have brought in a lot of diversity to the attires. Even new colours were introduced to dye the yarn. The result was that a whole range of dresses like shirts, tunics, skirts, pants, jackets, gowns and whatever was trendy, started getting made. This certainly is a great attraction to the youngsters as there is no taking away the fact that handloom fabric woven with only natural fibres are very comfortable to wear.

Anavila admitted that from what she had seen nine years ago when she started working with linen weavers of Phulia in West Bengal, has now changed for the better. “One of our oldest weavers told me that he has never earned as much as he is earning now. The younger generation, which had moved away to the cities to earn a livelihood, has slowly started returning to their roots and are taking up weaving again.”

But the designers work with very few number of weavers comprising hardly five per cent. The suffering of the rest of the weavers especially those in the North-East states is increasing more so in these Covid-19 pandemic times when orders have almost completely dried up. Though youngsters have become aware of the fabric, they buy just one or two garments as handmade products are always slightly costlier than machine-made.

Adding to their woes is the abolition of the 70-years-old All India Handloom Board by the government on July 27. The reason given by the Union Ministry of Textile is “for a leaner government machinery.” This was the worst gift for the national day for the weavers. All of us need to help the weaver’s sector as it’s the biggest sector in the world. In all other countries, the handloom sector has been almost replaced by the power looms and if designers or others need handwoven fabric, they turn to India to source.

It’s up to consumers of India to step in to help this sector by buying more handlooms and to take the sector back to the glorious time they had till as late as the 1980s.