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.

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).

Hyderabad, Show Me Love

For the last 8 months I’ve been working on a project that I am really excited about. It all began around a year ago when I met with the owners of Daaram, a store in Hyderabad, and they expressed an interest in retailing my brand there. Daaram is run by Dastkar Andhra, a non-profit dedicated to promoting handloom fabric, and because of our common passion we immediately got along. Latha, one of the partners at Daaram, seemed really keen on working with me because she felt that I could give her team of designers ideas on what kinds of handloom fabrics would work well for contemporary silhouettes; in the long run that kind of input will help handloom weavers compete with powerloom and mill made fabric suppliers.

In the last 6 months, while working on my Summer and upcoming Monsoon collections, the design team at Dastkar Andhra has been really patient with changing colours, fabric construction and weaves to suit my tastes. I often place orders asking, “Can you make yardage with fabric construction from A, the colours from B but change the green lines to the blue shade from fabric C”. Luckily for me, they oblige me whenever they can (there are rare exceptions like when the weavers of Muramunda refuse to weave in anything but Kora).

So this Thursday, on July 9th, Brass Tacks will launch in Hyderabad at Daaram. I’m nervous about the response, excited to reach out to more people, but mostly thrilled to have this opportunity so early in my business.

It's an Acquired Taste

I know that I cater to a very niche market through Brass Tacks, but sometimes I worry that within that niche my personal favourites probably cater to just a handful. This isn’t to say I don’t like everything I design; it just means that I’m aware of my taste and my tendency to choose fabrics that are not necessarily popular.

I’ve known this for a while, especially with my love for checks and stripes. I have used these fabrics before, but I’m always hesitant and I carefully pick the ones that I think will have universal appeal.

Recently I’ve been feeling a lot more strongly about my passion for traditional checks. Why should I choose only the checks that cater to a wide audience- isn’t part of creating a brand image having a distinct point of view and taking a few risks? A conversation I had with one of my customers the other day made me realize that if I spend too much energy focusing on what will sell really well, I might lose touch with my inspiration, thereby losing the point of view I set out to show. This customer (she’s a textile designer) was there to talk to the host of a show on NDTV-Hindu* about my store, and she told me that while she loves the fact that I use soft, thin cotton that crushes, she probably shouldn’t say that on TV because most people dislike that about cotton. Hearing her say that reminded me of a look that I too love. Sometimes I get so wrapped up trying to change the associations people have of traditional textiles in order to create something that is cosmopolitan, urban and marketable, that I forget (or push aside) what I love. Soft, thin cotton that crushes at your elbows and knees has a certain old world charm to it that I love. It’s natural in a very honest way unlike stiff, starched cotton or poly-cotton blends. Those may not crinkle, but they lack soul.

A huge focus at Brass Tacks is to take handloom fabric, and re-articulate them as modern silhouettes. It’s not enough to think about how a fabric may feel, or how a style may look. The final combination of fabric, silhouette, drape and tailoring forms a product that will trigger certain associations for customers. It’s my personal opinion that there are many women in India who feel that khadi, crushed cotton, and other traditional textiles are frumpy or old-school in a very unfashionable way. Especially when it comes to woven textiles, the traditional checks are not popular because ...well, I really don’t know why. Maybe not enough high-end designers make it look glamorous in the way that they make embroidery and sequins on chiffon silk look glamorous? A lot of textile magazines and books that I read lead me to believe that our traditional checks would be really popular in Europe and the pockets of the US and Japan, and maybe that’s because their associations of that fabric are different.

Recently I went through my mother’s collection of old Kanjeevaram sarees and I’m in love with them. The stripes and checks are amazing; with colour combinations I would never have imagined would look so stunning. I’m determined to use textiles inspired by these designs, but apparently no weaver in Kanjeevaram will weave cotton yardage anymore. That’s not my main problem though: the toughest challenge at hand is to design styles with these textiles, while staying true to the design aesthetic of these stripes and checks. Below are a few photos from my mother’s collection.






*The shoot at my store was for a show on NDTV-Hindu, and will air in about a month. I am so thankful to everyone who came over that day and spent so much time helping out. Really, I was touched to see how many people came and patiently waited for camera time.

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?

Natural Fabrics and Fit 101

One of the biggest reasons I chose to start Brass Tacks is because I care about how a garment should fit, and I felt there weren’t many brands in India that had both fit and interesting fabric in the same garment. I am fully aware that the fit may not work for every body type, but it does work for many and when it doesn’t, we do alterations or we make a fresh piece that works better for a different body type. Still, I find that some people are not happy with the fit in comparison to a tight t-shirt or anything with a bit of elastane (lycra) woven into the fabric. Some customers end up buying a size or two too small, and I fear that they are giving up comfort for what they think is a better fit. So I’m taking the advice of my pattern teacher (and mentor) and writing a short piece on why my clothes are not meant to be worn tight like second skin.

The difficult part about getting a “good fit” with natural fabrics is making a pattern that flatters the body without cutting out those few inches of ease that is necessary for basic movement. I’m not saying you can do yoga in Brass Tacks clothes, but you should be able to lift your arms to tie your hair, or at least give someone a hug without having the shoulder or back darts pull at the seams! A good test when trying on an upper body garment is to wrap your arms around your shoulder (like you are giving yourself a hug) and then gently throw your arms back in the opposite direction (like the flying scene in Titanic). If you can do these movements, the garment is not too tight.

Ready-made clothes can never be as perfect as a custom-made piece. I have to follow a size chart at Brass Tacks because we need to have some system for our grading of sizes, but it is unlikely that a woman’s measurements perfectly match up to the measurements of any one size on my chart. They could have a shoulder and bust measurement that matches size 8, but a waist and hip that matches size 6 for example. And then if you want to get into details, there are differences in how the body curves between the waist and hip, or between the hip and knee. Ready-made garments are convenient because they are available without the customer having to do any running around, but it is tough catering to a range of sizes and on top of that variations within each size. At the Brass Tacks store we offer alterations or other solutions to give customers the best of ready-made with some tweaking to work for the customer, but our fabrics are not meant to imitate knitwear. So rather than alter the garments to fit you like a glove, I say enjoy the freedom of movement and the breathing room that our clothes provide!

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.