Fashion fraternity looking ahead

Fashion designers and design houses were overjoyed at the discovery of the 18-volume set of books documenting forgotten fabrics and textures from a bygone era. Most of them hailed the find as something that could take designing to new heights.

"Anything to do with history generates a lot of interest and you are talking about silks and cottons dating back to over 300 years! I would love to see them for their weaves, look and texture," said Kiran Uttam Ghosh from Mumbai.

Former bureaucrat and Craft Council of India president Kasturi Gupta Menon said, "Today, there is a lot of duplicity and copying in the designing industry. But each of these specimens is fundamentally unique and fresh in creativity. Even mere copying the designs requires extraordinary skill. It would be an inspiration for designers to recognize the height that these weavers had reached, and to strive for attaining that height."

Designers Dev and Neil said that a lot of experiments are on with handloom and hand-printed textiles, as they have a huge market abroad. These samples would certainly help, they felt. "Take the case of Dhaka's muslin, which is not manufactured any longer despite the fact that we have made immense strides in the field of textile manufacturing. And here, you are talking about muslin not only from the British era, but also that of the Mughal era! We had just read about them in books. Now, we will love to see them and analyze if their weave and feel can be recreated today. We could use them not only to create period costumes, but also to design modern clothes," Dev said.

The discovery is so startling that it is giving her "goosebumps", said textile expert and kantha stitch revivalist Shamlu Dudeja. "It is great to know that the textile scraps have withstood the ravages of time. These need to be restored immediately, and this is not an easy task. I would first look at these myself and then get in touch with Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who takes deep interest in restoration, so that the best in the field could be involved," she said.

For designer Agnimitra Paul, the news sounded as exciting as being told that some pharaoh was discovered living underneath a pyramid! "We read about such textiles in design classes and thought this was heritage, on which we can never lay our eyes again. But now, there's an opportunity to see them. I would love to recreate some of them for my designs," Paul said.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/