Sophomore

For months I’ve been trying to work on a pair of cotton trousers that have a great fit around the hip and waist. I feel that most affordable brands (abroad as well as in India) make trousers that are more or less straight from the hip/butt up to the waist. So whatever fits me at the hip is loose at the waist, and if I try a size smaller then I can’t get into it because it’s too tight around my hips. I know I am not alone in this feeling, and I don’t even have a curvy figure to boast of, so what are all the other Indian women doing for trousers?

Out of necessity to add a pair of cotton trousers to my wardrobe and the desire to get to the bottom of this trouser-for-women-with-hips problem, I have been spending a lot of time and energy and even tears (yes, there was that one time when I just cried in frustration) trying to develop a pair of cotton trousers that fit well. You’re probably wondering why a simple pair of cotton trousers requires this much time, but it’s tough to get that perfect fit without lycra; plus I don't have any formal training in pattern making which would have definitely helped. Things reached a point where I tried to outsource the pattern making to other companies that provide this sort of service, but I wasn’t happy with their fits either. Then I went sleuthing around at other major boutiques, but either they didn’t have great fits in pure cotton, or they used blends of cotton, polyester and lycra to get a figure hugging fit.

It kind of pains me to know that the pattern we finally arrived at was under my nose the whole time. It just required a few tweaks from another pattern we had (raise the crotch level, tighten the thigh and contour the waist) which I discovered after spending 2 days staring at all the paper patterns and pants we had produced so far. Anyway, after months of making around 50 samples that didn’t work, I have introduced our first pair of cotton trousers, “Sophomore”, into the store. It’s fitted around the hip, it’s booty lifting, and it’s really comfortable. It comes in brown (the ones in the photos below), ivory and black. I’m so excited about these that I'm giving my regular customers a special price on these trousers just to share the joy.

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.

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).

My Cottage Industry

A recent financial crunch has got me thinking about the future and security of Brass Tacks. I’m not referring to the recession but rather my current bank balance. I’ve been ordering fabric in large quantities to feed my store as well as the Brass Tacks section at Daaram (Hyderabad), but it’s going to take a long time for sales to pick up there and for me to recover those costs. The good news is that the low bank balance has motivated me to think of new sales solutions like the new pricing scheme and the idea of brighter colours for future collections. What I need to focus on next are issue of scale. How viable are some of my measures for quality control as the company grows bigger?

Take, for example, the issue of fabric shrinkage. To guarantee my customers that none of my clothes will shrink I have them all washed once. If a fabric has a loose weave, it is soaked for an hour and then washed. If the shrinkage is very high, it is washed again to shrink a second time. This process also gets rid of surface dyes and any nasty smell that the fabric has absorbed during its long train journey to Chennai. Right now all the fabric is washed by the woman who washes clothes at my parents’ house. It started out with tiny quantities of 30 metres of fabric per week, but as the company has grown the quantities have gone up (I’m embarrassed to admit how much fabric I send home every week). It just doesn’t make sense for me to send all the fabric home- it seems so unprofessional and so cottage industry-ish for a company that wants to operate like a mini industry. However at the moment I don’t have another solution. There must be large industrial machines out there that mimic a “gentle handwash” process for handwoven fabrics, but I haven’t had the time to research them yet.

Until Brass Tacks has more creative solutions for the not-so-easy-to-scale stuff, we’re still washing all our fabric in-house (literally). And since both my parents were out of town last week and none of their domestic help came to work, the next best (and immediate) solution for some kora coloured khadi fabric to be shrunk was for me to wash it. Oh well, at least the dress ("Lady Bird") got made in time for weekend sales.

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?

Fresh Air, Fresh Ideas

Whenever I feel burdened with mundane work to the point where I’m losing sight of my goal and I don’t have enough time to design, I usually plan a trip to meet with suppliers. These trips always motivate and refresh me, reminding me of what’s more important than the small details: the bigger picture in relation to the handloom and textile crafts industry in India.

July and August this year were difficult months with staff issues, so as soon as they were somewhat under control I took off with my mom on a short trip to Ahmedabad and Baroda. In Baroda I went to visit Mala Sinha, a textile designer who graduated from NID. Mala runs her own company called Bodhi, and she prints her own designs on saris and yardage.

Touring the Bodhi workshop was like discovering my dream factory. A “colour kitchen” has dyes neatly stored with apparatus to make sure the correct dye amount (it’s measured and weighed) is used for each shade. Recipes for shades and colour combinations are documented for each print, and this is done separately for each fabric because different yarns have different capacities to absorb colour. I have had many experiences with my handloom and block-print suppliers not being able to match colour swatches or not being able to replicate their own work in the same colour shades. Mala makes it look so easy with her documents for how to replicate each print. If only other weavers and printers had her vision. Mala should really get invited to run a training workshop that other printers and tie-dyers can attend!

Another feature that motivated me at the Bodhi workshop was the use and recycling of rain water. Rainwater is collected in large tanks every monsoon and that water is used for washing and dyeing. The used water goes to a filter system with Canna plants that clean the water. That water is re-used again for fabric washing and dyeing. Seeing the impressive system there reminded me of another one of my long term goals: helping my suppliers set up infrastructure that is more environmentally friendly. My fiance was the one who first commented on the effluence created by dyeing when we visited my leheria supplier in Jaipur. Most craftsmen have a small setup with no treatment plant for their waste water, so it just flows out to the drainage system and will probably damage the soil. Bodhi’s water treatment plant is simple and effective, and a fabulous example to anyone who wants to be responsible about their production process.

Below are pictures from the Bodhi workshop/factory.

The precision required to measure dyes.

[Colourful] Grey water before the purification process and the Canna filter bed.

Mala Sinha of Bodhi

Research and Documentation

A friend of mine once told me that Indians haven’t done a good job of documenting our history and our knowledge. She was referring in particular to the field of traditional medicine and healing techniques. In the last few weeks, while I’ve been gathering research material for a section on textile crafts that I plan to have in the new Brass Tacks website (that’s right- coming up very soon), I realized that even in the area of textiles where so much has been written, it is still hard to find books that explain the crafts in a language that is easy to comprehend. Many of the essays are detailed analyses related to economics and the textile sector, and many of the coffee table books are more for visual appeal with just a paragraph of information on the origin of the craft or details of the technique.

There is one visual guide on world textiles by John Gillow that provides, albeit only for famous or popular textiles, clear explanations on craft techniques from different parts of the world. Since the book is a visual guide however, it does not go into the details of different designs or variations within a craft, and it does not provide much insight into the origin of the crafts either. For example, I am not sure why the world famous Varanasi sarees that use an extra weft technique in gold and silver are referred to by the Bengali word for extra weft: Jamdani. The Craft Revival Trust, as I’ve mentioned before, has documented many crafts and classified them in a way that makes them easy to find on their website, however a lot of those descriptions seem as if they are meant for people who already know the basics (or are some basics like the origin of Varanasi Jamdani omitted due to lack of information)?

This post was first motivated by a piece I found on the Craft Revival Trust website, and then more recently while writing information on textile crafts for the Brass Tacks website I became more appreciative of this clear and concise piece on the loom. Written by a textile designer, this definition-essay is a simple but thorough explanation of the way a handloom works. For many readers the details on the intricacies of the loom might be a little too much, but if you are interested in studying the basics of fabric construction, then this is it: easy to read, easy to comprehend, and easily accessible - Ayeshe Sadr’s Demystifying the Loom.

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.