If khadi could sing, it would be humming a new tune, but with centuries-old notes
Different designers fall in love with khadi for different reasons. Some love it for its feel, some for its texture, some for its origin, and some for its usability. Common to them is a passion to create something beautiful with a fabric made entirely by human hands.
The appropriation of khadi by India’s independence movement had indelibly branded the fabric with more than just patriotic sentiments: The government of independent India stepped in to preserve and promote the fabric, and the eco-system that produced it. For centuries before Mahatma Gandhi decided to take to the charkha to defy British-made textile and for the decades since, khadi has been the fabric of the nation, both literally and metaphorically. However, its popular image, at least in urban India, has come to be dominated by the government-controlled khadi bhandars, housed in their sleepy and dusty high-ceilinged shops.
In the recent past, as Indians have found their feet in the international arena, khadi is being used to give shape to evolving sensibilities. It has broken out of its patriotic straitjacket, but remained true to its philosophy. The designers who believe in this philosophy are moulding their work practices around khadi’s laborious production process, while shunning mainstream demands of the fashion industry. We spoke to a selection of these designers to understand what appeal the fabric holds for them.
Ravi Kiran & Chandrasekhar
Brand: Metaphor Racha
Ravi Kiran and Chandrasekhar don’t categorise themselves so much as designers as craftsmen. They are passionate about working with khadi because they believe that when there are so many pairs of human hands involved in its production, it does not need any more value addition.
The four-year-old brand is fiercely local, concentrating on the Kannada variant of khadi that, traditionally, has been used to produce towels and lungis. “There is an abundance of locally available resources and they need to be utilised as much as possible,” says Chandrasekhar. “It is also easier to communicate with the back end since we speak the same language.” Working locally is also aimed at keeping the craft alive: “Craftsmen are moving away from the rural context. We are trying to hold them back, and provide them with opportunities.”
Unlike its fine counterparts from Bengal, khadi from Karnataka is coarse. Innovation, therefore, lies in the visual appeal of the fabric. Intervention from Kiran and Chandrasekhar takes place at the technical level, managing, for instance, the density of the fabric and colour combinations.
(This story appears in the July-Aug 2015 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)