Ikat Paradise

Perusing a fabric storage unit is always physically stressful. I have an acute fabric dust allergy, and a storage unit with tons of unwashed fabric sends me into a sneezing frenzy from which I take a full day to recover. Still, I can never refuse the opportunity to go through a supplier’s storage of fabric because I usually discover at least one fabulous piece that I would never have seen otherwise; usually suppliers tend to send swatches of their latest fabrics rather than an old forgotten piece lying in their ‘godown’.

In the last couple of months I’ve been keen on developing ikat fabrics with large motifs, similar to the ikat designs I’ve seen in antique pieces from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. I took a few print outs of images I found online and in encyclopedias and sent them to my supplier, Manasa Ikat Fabrics, in Hyderabad for reference. He said it would be difficult to develop and asked if I could just choose from his own collection. He sent me some swatches, but except for one, I didn’t care too much for the others- they were large motifs but they looked like Indian home furnishings fabric.

During my trip to launch my Monsoon Collection at Daaram in Hyderabad last week, I visited his fabric godown. I found just what I was looking for and more. Here are pictures of Central Asian designs and some others that I really loved; my trip there was definitely worth the clogged sinus.

Getting Back on Track

For once, hearing multiple opinions about my work has given me clarity and re-affirmed my faith in my original goals. A couple of weekends ago I went to Mumbai and met with fashion boutique owners to get feedback on my collections and design sensibilities. Most of the store owners said they liked my clothes but that it didn't fit in with the rest of the collections in their store. I understand where they are coming from- if someone walked into a high-end store willing to spend upwards of Rs 5000 on a garment, they wouldn’t want something simple looking (no matter how well cut or well tailored). One store owner added that women in Mumbai get put off by cotton!

At first I hid under the shelter of my brand positioning and stereotypes about Mumbai and Delhi (which is that they are into bling and my brand is far from that). Honestly however, there is a lot of creativity out there that has nothing to do with bling in the high-end fashion market. I came back from Mumbai wishing that my clothes were just as creative (rather than safe) and wondering if I should tap into the high-end market to make some money. But the truth of the matter is that Mumbai and Chennai are very different markets, and I am much more excited about designing affordable well-cut clothes made from high-quality handwoven textiles rather than a few high-end pieces. At the same time, I would be lying if I said that making money isn’t starting to become a pressure – hopefully that will change once I earn some!

My trouble and difficulty now lies with being in Chennai and figuring out my initial market here. I’ve talked about this before- how my fabrics appeal to older women who appreciate the textiles of traditional sarees but the cuts and silhouettes appeal to younger women. While I am trying hard to incorporate brighter colours and a good mix of traditional and modern textile designs in my collections, the toughest part is choosing which styles (cuts and silhouettes) to make. I get the feeling that women want something different, but not too different, and figuring out the fine line between Unique and "too different" is a lot tougher than it may seem. The halter dress (Black Orchid from the Monsoon collection) is young in style and many women liked bought it but many also said that it was too dressy and that they don’t have an occasion to wear it to. The sand washed cowl neck tops always do well, but cowl necks have now become a Brass Tacks staple and they are so safe! Snapdragon, one of my personal favourites, has a fitted torso and a wide sleeve and while customers love the fit, they prefer a regular cap sleeve rather than a wide one. What if I had made it with an ordinary cap sleeve though- wouldn’t that have made the top too ordinary?

I’m happy to hear suggestions on how to walk this tightrope, and in the meantime here is a photo of a blue ikat fabric in silk that I bought in Hyderabad to make Black Orchid (in blue).

Drying on my balcony (yes, I washed it myself).

At the store when I bought it.

Monsoon 09 Textile Details

Many people have told me that my website should have a zoom facility so that they can see the texture of the fabric and some of the garment details. I was in such a hurry to get a website done within a certain budget that I didn't look into providing some of the options that you often see on websites that have online shopping (which is a pity because the photos don't always do justice to a garment made from fabric with so much depth). It's probably going to be a while before I get the website re-vamped again (it's a painful amount of micro-managing every time) and I know a home photography job isn't the best way to show the textile details, but here are some photos of the fabrics from the latest Monsoon Collection

Silk ikat woven in Andhra Pradesh for "Black Orchid".
Mud resist block printing done on tussar-cotton fabric in Kaladera, Rajasthan for "Cinched Kimono".

Soft cotton twill handwoven in Andhra Pradesh for "Comfort Skirt"

Jamdaani (the black motifs done by adding an extra weft by hand) on khadi cotton, handwoven in Andhra Pradesh for "Lady Bird"

Handwoven cotton with coloured ribs from Andhra Pradesh, for "Snapdragon".
Some of these photos have two fabrics to show other colour options in the same style.

Behind again

There was a time, not so long ago, when I had my collections planned out for the entire year ahead. Even if I hadn’t ordered the fabrics, at least knew what I was going to order; saving me hours of time deciding which colour, which design and which print to order. Now I’ve found myself running behind schedule for the winter collection (I’m still ordering my fabrics and will probably have to launch the collection a few weeks later than planned), and since I’ve been spending time focusing on the higher level stuff I’ve let go of a lot of small but important details.

The solution isn’t really to cut out on the higher level stuff- it’s important that I concentrate on the branding and marketing aspect of my business – but I guess I need to manage my time a lot better until I can afford an efficient assistant. I wouldn’t have put so much thought into coming out with a new pricing scheme for my collection (which is I think is paying off by the way) or listened harder to customer feedback about the lack of bright colours if I wasn’t spending the amount of time that I have analyzing past sales and talking to customers at the store. However all the new information that I have now has made me a slower decision maker (translation: indecisive). I think ten times before ordering fabrics now (“will this really be popular and still stand out as different?”) and I spend more time explaining design ideas to my suppliers.

This new process is a little more tedious, I have to admit. When I wasn’t thinking about customer appeal I selected fabrics that were more representative of my taste and my design aesthetic. Now I’m conscious of sales and catering to a wider variety of tastes that my customers have. So rather than nurturing that innate instinct that drew me to a particular fabric I am trying to hone my data analysis skills to choose fabrics that will increase my store popularity. Serves me right for majoring in economics.

All this high level work has resulted in the suffering of other small details (or low level management) that went a long way. I’ve stopped doing my random checks on garments at the production unit and I’m starting to find small errors with finished garments at the store. I’ve stopped my training sessions with my sales staff and I find they are settling into complacency. When do founders of businesses get to leave behind the small stuff to focus only on high level decision making?

Right now I’m ordering ikat fabrics for an ankle length cotton dress for the spring collection. I had originally wanted Uzbekistan ikat inspired designs, but those might be hard to design and replicate in Andhra. So here are some designs from my supplier in Andhra and I’m trying to figure out which ones would work better and what colours I should change. Think of these fabrics made into a thin cotton dress, fitted at the empire line and with a halter neck or a low neck with thin shoulder straps. Thoughts or suggestions?

I really like this one but might have to change a few colours to make it look brighter. Perhaps indigo instead of black or fill the white spaces with indigo.

This has promise but needs a complete colour makeover. I was thinking of going ultra modern with yellow, pink and peacock blue (it will look muted when mixed with the off-white weft yarn).

Kora Weaves Only Please

*Kora is an off-white colour, the natural colour of cotton.

One of my suppliers in Secunderabad has a talented design team that produces beautiful weaves in cotton. I’m really excited about my relationship with this supplier because a few months ago they approached me to work closely with them to develop fabrics that I can use for Brass Tacks. They are concerned that the competition with power-loom and mill made fabric is causing the market for handwoven fabric to shrink. When I spoke to them I mentioned that I often come across handwoven fabric that looks striking, but because of the fabric construction it does not work for tailored garments. My current work with this supplier is to find ways to make hand-woven fabrics “imitate” power-loom or mill-made fabrics in terms of strength and construction.

Traditionally, the need for tighter weaves with greater strength didn’t arise because both the dhoti and the sari are yards of woven fabric tied around the body without any tailoring. While it is true that for some thin fabrics the soul and beauty of the fabric is lost when the construction is altered, many other handwoven fabrics that are modified for tailoring still maintain their charm. For the last few months I’ve been really into undefined, irregular woven checks- the kind that are woven with random ikat lines of different colours in the warp and weft (see photo below). This supplier must have a design team that shares my taste because they have a fabulous collection of irregular checks. Particularly stunning were the swatches of kora checks woven on kora fabric.





I fell in love with this fabric right away. It’s amazing how design ideas just flood my brain when I see/feel/touch a fabric that I’m really excited about. I already have a great double layered dress cut on the bias planned with that fabric, as well as a light shirt with pleats. Thrilled to work with this fabric, I placed an order for 4 different checked patterns, except I wanted them in blue, lavender, brick red, and orange.

A couple of days ago I got a phone call from my supplier saying that the weaver society that makes that fabric is very reluctant to work with coloured yarn and that they will only weave that same pattern in kora (the natural colour of cotton: off-white). After talking on the phone for a few minutes I learned that even if my supplier had the yarn dyed in the colour I want and then sent it to the weavers, they would still not be willing to weave the fabric. I am asking for exactly the same construction, the same weave, the same pattern, same everything except for the colour. I was dumbstruck, to say the least, and issues like this one make me think of the huge task ahead of me as I expand my business and experiment more with handwoven fabrics. The lead designer offered a few explanations: that the weavers are too set in their ways and very resistant to change, and, a technical issue, that it is harder to spot weaving defects once the eye has got used to seeing plain kora. I hope that going forward weavers will come out of their box and be willing to experiment. Sure, right now they have a huge market for their kora fabric just the way it is, but believe me, that fabric can go places in colour. Until then, the immediate solution is to have the fabric woven in kora and then dye the entire fabric afterwards. It is a bit of a compromise (the fabric looks less patchy if it is yarn dyed), but what am I going to do?

R&D in the Textile Industry

I realized today that my Monsoon Collection comes out in less than a month and I haven’t spent any time writing about the design process or the themes for this collection. I wanted to experiment more with colour, with ikat, and with prints, so this collection is going to be a lot more dramatic than the previous ones (in a subtle, Brass Tacks kind of way of course!) Unfortunately, as is often the case, many of the fabrics that I’ve used didn’t turn out quite like how I expected. Not that they turned out looking bad, but the difference is very visible and it makes a huge difference to the overall impact of the outfit.

I’ve often wondered how that misunderstanding between me and my suppliers happen, especially since all my letters are illustrated with detailed explanations. At first I used to think it was because of my poor Hindi that the suppliers would often misinterpret or overlook certain details in my order. Now I’m starting to think that the best way to get the job done is to have a textile designer working closely with them- a Brass Tacks employee who works on my design team to come up with designs for each collection and then coordinates with the suppliers to execute the designs. Seems like an expensive investment, but definitely something I need to look into in the long run. Next month I am making a trip to Jaipur and Ahmedabad, and hopefully I will be able to meet some faculty and students at NID who work with textile craftsmen and see what they think about this.

Ideally though, the craftsmen should have their own textile designer on their team. Things would be a lot easier for buyers if the designer can help the craftsmen come up with a set of swatches to send to suppliers, and a documentation system so that the swatches can be replicated relatively easily. The designer could also make life easier for the supplier by working on new designs and new techniques of dyeing or weaving to cater to a variety of tastes. The investment of a full time textile designer is too expensive for the craftsmen who work at a grass roots level however, and only larger organizations like Rehwa and Dastkar Andhra can afford to invest in research and development with textile designers on board. The tough part about a small company like mine hiring a full time textile designer is that he or she would have to be an expert on a variety of textile crafts in order to work with weavers, block printers, and tie-dyers. That kind of varied expertise is hard to find.

In other related news, I recently met a woman with an MBA who wants to start a business supplying designers and production houses with handloom fabrics that have an “international market”. This would involve organizing weaver’s cooperatives to use their craft skills for designs that are not necessarily traditional. For example, it could mean that a weaver in Gujarat who makes shawls with a large motif woven all over it might have to change his design to smaller motifs that are woven far apart because that minimal look with a hint of extra weft design is easier to sell to an international buyer. The issue of modifying traditional designs to suit a “cosmopolitan, urban, international” market is something that I’ll take up in some other post, but for the moment let’s see the practical and financial benefits. This is the innovation that’s needed to revive and organize the textile sector. Catering to an existing demand is a much better business model than trying to push a product that doesn’t have a huge demand at price points that are profitable for the business. Plus for designers like me, think how easy it would make our lives if we could just contact someone, explain the design to them and pay that extra fee to pass your headache of following up with suppliers and ensuring they get your design right onto the agent.

Below is a picture showing the sample I had sent the weaver on the left, and his woven product on the right. The size of the checks and the dull finish in the sample swatch make all the difference to the final look of the fabric.

And here is a block printed fabric from Rajasthan. The checked design is theirs, but I had asked for a darker blue with ochre and instead I got something that's closer to turquoise with ochre. Also, notice the quality of the checks and how some of them are not well defined.

This one however came closer to what I had asked for in terms of colour matching my pantone shades.

Summer 2008 photo shoot

Last week's photo shoot went off really well. I had a good feeling about it before it began, but I didn’t think everything would come together so perfectly.

As I mentioned last week, we used props that people associate with summer, and for logistical reasons we used my parents’ house as our location again (however we have exhausted all corners and backdrops within the house and garden after 5 photo shoots so next time I’ll have to move out of this comfort zone ... time to hit up the willing neighbours with nice houses)!

I think what really helped this time was that my photographer and I discussed the look and concept of each image until we could visualize each of the creative shots beforehand. We wasted less time figuring out the model's posture and where the props should go. We used coconuts, watermelons, and mangoes in different shots to portray the mood and complement the clothes. I managed to hire a really old murphy radio for one of the shots because I liked the image of the model sitting outdoors, listening to music and eating fruit on a warm summer morning!
Here’s a sneak preview of that shot:
My photographer has been waiting patiently for an entire year now to do some creative photography and I am so happy with the way these photographs have come out. The model is a friend of a friend, and besides being gorgeous and a great model (she got into pose within seconds of being in front of the camera), she was also very professional and managed to sustain her energy and enthusiasm throughout the day. Our day started at 5:30am when the make-up artist arrived and we wrapped up at 5:30pm with 4 creative shots and 10 catalogue shots. The photographs will be up online in a week.

Below is a shot of a style called “Button Mushroom”- made from the thin cotton ikat fabric I had photographed in an earlier blog post. The top didn’t turn out like how I had initially planned, but I think this is better suited to the design and feel of the fabric.

Nervous

This month has been really great so far in terms of sales. All that press in the past few weeks must have really helped. The strange thing is that all this attention and the increase in sales is starting to make me worry about my designs for the next collection. I suppose that’s good in a way. I mean, I should spend more time editing my collection and thinking about how I can make each piece really unique and special. But the downside is I’m worried about going overboard. And what is overboard? There have been styles that I was worried about for no reason, and others that I thought were pretty elegant but they ended up moving very slowly.

A few months ago I visited an Ikat supplier in Hyderabad where I spotted some beautiful, soft cotton fabric with random ikat lines going horizontally and vertically across the fabric. From a distance it has that “khadi look” that most fake and real khadi fabrics sold commercially today have, with the ikat lines. However this fabric is made from mercerized, super-smooth yarn and when I saw the fabric it just spoke to me and said “buy me now”. Before I knew what was happening, I had bought the stock fabric they had, and ordered more in another colour. This is what the fabric looks like:


Sure, you might think it’s boring, but I have great plans for this fabric. I have in my head an image of a fitted top with a corset-style tie up at the back. I can’t decide if the top looks better with or without sleeves, but if I choose the former they will be kimono-ish sleeves. The tie-up lacework at the back is just to tighten the top for shape, not to actually make it skin-tight like a corset. In front, to add colour, I will have either running stitches or pin tucks with a contrast coloured thread radiating away from the neck. A dull yellowish gold (but non metallic) for the black, and pink for the brown. There, I’ve given away a style idea before the collection is out, but who knows how much editing is going to take place between now and the end of April.

Transformation

My exposure to fabric started at a young age when I would explore my mother’s closet. My mother co-started a store in Chennai called Shilpi- where she and her partner worked hard to source handwoven sarees from all over India. So without being told or even taking much interest in my mother’s work, I assimilated her aesthetic sense for natural fabrics, earthy colours, interesting designs, colour combinations that are bold but not loud, and most of all her passion for the craftsmen and their work.

I won’t go into the details of why the handloom sector is shrinking today. The price of powerloom fabrics, the competition in the market, the lack of demand for fabric that is hard to maintain are just a few reasons. So what can be done to increase the demand for handwoven fabric? There are companies like Fabindia that deserve massive props for making traditional textile crafts so accessible with their affordable price range and product variety, and then there are high end designers who employ intricate handwork as embellishments on garments. What’s in between? Anokhi has fabulous blockprints, and there are small businesses like mine that use traditional fabric while trying to give the final product a contemporary feel.

What we do here at Brass Tacks is more than just converting handwoven fabric into a garment with a western silhouette. We hope to create a change in the way the textile industry operates and the way people perceive traditional textile crafts (very lofty I know, but bear with me for a few more lines). By marrying traditional textile crafts with a very contemporary, urban look, I hope to change the way people understand these fabrics. Sometimes I alter a textile design or use a traditional skill to create a contemporary design or use a modern colour combination so that the overall look of the garment is still modern, and hopefully somewhat cosmopolitan.

I’ll stop here with two examples from previous collections. I could go on about my goals and my brand vision for several posts…


This is an ikat shirt. Ikat is an old craft process of tie-dying yarn before the fabric is woven, so in order to create a design a lot of calculation has to go into the yarn dying. I’ve broken up the homogeneity of the ikat with the strips of brown fabric, and the pin-tucks are just to give it an urban context. The entire shirt is cotton and silk.


This is one of my favourite shirts- Art Deco. The checks are actually a traditional block at Chaubundi, Rajasthan. The checks are not printed directly- first the block is dipped into a mixture of clay, lime, natural gum resin and wheat and then that mixture is printed onto the fabric that has been dipped into a mordant to allow for easy absorption of colour. Finally, the fabric with the printed mixture is dipped into a dye and the area of the fabric that is not covered with the mixture gets dyed. Very tedious, but worth it. The rani pink (hot pink) piping is to give it a Rajasthani flavour.