Humble handloom gets a chic avatar

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It takes a vision, few fabrics and threads to craft marvellous weaves. That is what the yarn-loving designers at the ongoing Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week have created — weaves incorporating experimental textile techniques.
Abraham and Thakore, Rahul Mishra, Gaurav Jai Gupta, Dev r Nil, Vaishali S, Anju Modi and Aneeth Arora are some of the designers who have moulded the hand-woven fabrics, employed various materials and practices to develop textured surfaces that declare the arrival of the humble handloom and how handloom can be chic.
Designer duo Dev r Nil played with the count of the ply and the change of yarn to get the desired feel of sheerness and opacity within the same fabric to produce a single piece. They blended four-ply cotton with two-ply cotton and silk to get the effect. The other interesting highlight of their work is the silk with kantha stitches woven as extra ply in the fabric to represent boundaries. “The idea was to create the look of kantha embroidery through weaving. We have also developed bold checks with various shades within the same fabric that give the matt look of cotton and smoothness of silk,” explains Dev.
Designer Gaurav Jai Gupta, who primarily works on textiles and loves the understated look, decided to do something different this time. Resultantly, he produced hand-woven fabrics with Swarovski crystal woven within the fabric, alongside stainless steel, cotton, mohair, angora and silk using age-old traditional weaving techniques of Tangail and Jamdani.
Says Gaurav, “My belief lies in strengthening the relationship between traditional skills and progressive manufacturing techniques; nature and technology. With an element of progression and juxtaposition of materials and techniques, I developed engineered handloom couture out of the basic handloom.”
If Mumbai-based Vaishali S has used hand-woven organic cotton with beads weaved into the fabric to infuse a thought into the garment, Rahul Mishra has illustrated two contrasting families of yarn that are woven together in a harmonious way. So his trench coats, jackets and dresses prove that opposite forms like wool and silk coexist in a perfectly interlocked surface.
In a single garment both the fabrics stand out. If silk brings in a certain shine then the concurrent wool or cotton subdues it. In a garment if organza stiffens the texture, the parallel silk weave liquefies it. “Like all the best puzzles, my collection, called ‘Similar Opposites’, is all about concealed complexity. The inherent sophistication is masked under a layer of hand-woven influences,” sums up Rahul.