Posted by Marian Vasilescu on January 19, 2023 in Fashion
Bengal cotton sarees online shopping from silkpetalss.com: With industrialisation entering India, with the Britishers, synthetic dyes made their official entry. Local traders started importing chemical dyes from other countries and along came the unknown techniques of dyeing and printing, which gave Indian saris a new unimaginable variety. The development of textiles in India started reflecting in the designs of the saris – they started including figures, motifs, flowers. With increasing foreign influence, sari became the first Indian international garment. Find additional details at shop Bengal cotton sarees online.
The style was popularised in the 1870s by a Bengali lady – Jnanadanandini Devi … She adopted the front pleat style of wearing the sari from the Parsee women she had seen in Bombay, and wore it with a blouse and petticoat, as they did, which was different from the traditional Bengali style of wearing the sari, says Chishti, who started a Sari School in 2009 in Delhi, and conducts workshops on the sari and the different methods of tying them. The blouse is also an adaptation by the Parsees, from the Western puffed sleeve blouse they wore over the long skirt. Though they had come from Persia 700 years earlier, they adopted the sari as they sought asylum in India on the condition that they would wear the local dress, adopt the local food habits and the local language of the western state of Gujarat. The sari shows the rich diversity of Indian dyeing, printing and silk weaving.
Saris weave their way across much of India, on women rainbowing through the streets of Mumbai on bicycles, on actresses starring in Bollywood movies, or decking out multiple generations of a family in Rajasthan. Visitors seduced by the vibrancy and mythology of saris can shop for one to take home. Unlike other traditional garments in some cultures, the sari isn’t reserved for people of one nationality or set of beliefs. “I don’t think it’s disrespectful for Westerners to wear a sari,” says Chishti. “It’s more of an honor.” There is nothing wrong with sewing a dazzling one into a skirt or displaying it like art on a wall, says Sethi.
History shows one such incident involving Jnanadanandini Debi, the wife of Satyendranath Tagore, brother of the famous Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was denied access to a club because of her “untamed” ways of dressing. What strikes here is an opposite scenario in Victorian Britain where women fought to liberalize themselves from the rigidity of Victorian corsets, both literally and metaphorically. The recent phenomenon of “free the nips” or “no bra club” shows how women in liberal democracies are still fighting the battle for the desexualisation of breasts. What the global north is still fighting to achieve was found inherently in the ways Indian society, especially women, used to express themselves.
Silk Petalss was born from a career Investment Professional’s love for the rich heritage of Indian handcrafted textiles and artefacts. Her admiration for the beautiful heritage weaves and products saw her travelling widely through interior villages and towns of India, interacting with the weaving community and understanding their perspective and concerns. Awareness about their issues, specifically post Covid19, the need to protect the community and our rich heritage led to Silk Petalss being created. See more information on https://silkpetalss.com/.
The popularity of the sari has a great deal to do with its versatility. The sari can be draped in nearly a hundred ways, allowing the wearer to style it so as to look formal or casual. Most of the drape styles are specific to different regions of India and, just like the food and regional languages, are a result of context, geography and function, explains 39-year-old Malika Verma, co-creator with Rta Kapur Chishti, 72, a sari historian, textile scholar and co-author of Saris: Tradition and Beyond, of the The Sari Series, a series of 84 short films documenting India’s regional sari drapes.