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CRAFT PROJECT. KRUTIKA.
CRAFT PROJECT.
IIAD
x RANGSUTRA.
The project aimed at making us more familiar with the indigenous textiles, clothing traditions, local identities and craft practices, with a live brief from Rangsutra Crafts India Limited.Rangsutra is a company started in 2006, owned by a community of artisans across rural India. It acts as a bridge between rural artisans and global consumers in order to develop sustainable livelihoods and revive India’s rich craft heritage.It believes that our communities of artisans, particularly women deserves economic opportunities and it aims to keep alive the rich tradition of their craftsmanship in a rapidly changing urban market.Through this project the students get and opportunity to work as design consultants and crate outcomes which are market ready.
The brief gave us an opportunity to build a collection on the inidan context of crafts and east asian approach of clothing traditions.It started with a craft internship and field visit to the village Hardoi,Lucknow.The visit helped us understand and appreciate the finer nuances of craft that was Chikankari, which became our primary research and documentation of our whole experience. It was then taken forward to design a thematic collection targeting the Spring Summer 2021 season, as per the guidlines provided by rangsutra. We were divided into groups and we had to work for different categories, my group had to design for Rangsutra for FabIndia.The collection comprises of following categories; womens ethnic, womens western, mens ethnic, bottoms and zero waste.
PHOOLON WALI GALI
-border and fall
Another Awadh* twilight – took two hours to take in and spell out a trifle needing ten seconds to sort out yoked one’s untiring brain to the rattle cart of a brainless lout tired it out on Hazratganj streets – up, down and about, no ends met today, made do with a talking bout spent the evening yet again, like a fated rout.
LUCKNOW.
pictures i clicked on the go that reflects my journey and experience.
The project started with a visit to lucknow, heart of the chikankari craft, to understand the culture, tradition, people, communities, art, terrain, colors, architecture and costumes. The trip really helped us to connect and to understand the origin and the traces of the culture and the craft in this well developed city. Through this visit i got to see how with time the culture is somewhere diminishing and the city is losing it’s Old world charm. But still the city’s architecture still prominently holds and reflects the history and has still retained the culture in itself.The colors, the motifs , the texture, the broken bricks
somewhere tells about the time that these buildings have seen and the generations which has touched it. This old architecture communicates it’s importance and significance. The motifs on the gates and the walls were made by the mughals to communicate. All these motifs had different meanings and significance, like the motif of twin-fishes (Mahi-maratib). And its beautiful to see how these motifs translated on fabric as embroidered chikankari. With the motifs we got to see calligraphy as well, as an ornamentation of these tall minarets.Other than architecture the food has it’s own essence of cuisines and taste of old recipes that again takes you to rich flavours from the time of mughals.
HARDOI.
90kms away from the city we used to travel to Sandhila district in Hardoi village. That was where all the artisans used to live and we used to go to the women’s center there everyday to learn the craft from them and to understand their lifestyle and perspective about the craft. So it was a transition that we used to see from city life of lucknow to the life close to nature in village. We saw the houses of these artisans and learned their stories. Its was beautiful to see how they cherrish every small little thing that they have and makes the best use out of it, which would otherwise be negligible to our eyes. And this reflected in how they taught us as well, how when i used to make a single mistake in embroidery , she used to make me open the whole thread again. Shows the respect and patience that they have for their work.
CHIKANKARI. ndian chikan work goes as far back as the early 3rd century BC, with one tale mentioning the story of a traveller who taught chikan to a peasant in return for drinking water. However, the most popular, and factually checkable story is that Noor Jahan, the wife of Mughal emperor Jehangir, introduced the Persian art in India in the 17th century. She herself was a talented embroideress, and had a particular fondness for this art. Her husband is said to have loved chikan work too and has established several workshops to perfect this art form in India. Started as a white-on-white embroidery form, back in the day, the favoured fabric was muslin or mulmul as it was best suited to the warm, slightly humid climate. After the downfall of the Mughal Empire, chikankari artisans spread all over India, but Lucknow remained the main center, with Awadh a close second.
The women center: we were assigned to one artisan each, who made us know and learn chikankari with first hand experience.There are 32 stitches of chikankari, which are broadly classified into raised , emboss and flat stitch.And were taught 5 stitches which are commonly and broadly used phanda, pechni, bakhiya, kangan, tepchi.
pechni Phanda Kangan
Bakhiya
THE PROCESS.
Through the whole journey we got to experience the whole process and stages that a piece of craft goes through and all the hands that get involved in making one piece of the craft work. It really helped us to understand all the hardwork and handwork that goes into it. So, starting from the block printing, where we got to see different types of blocks from different times and we realised how slowly the motifs are also getting contemporarised with the time. The ink was made with all edible materials and thus was soluble in water. After printing it was then sent to the workshops for embroidery. And then last stage was washing, We went to the site which was on the bank of gomti river and there we saw how they make their own solution with all the natural substances and mix it with water and add wash the fabrics in the pit. we had put up an exhibition explaining our thoughts and our journey.
X
• Fabindia is a lifestyle brand that was founded by John Bissell in 1960. True to its tagline “Celebrate India”, the brand specializes in the most beautiful Indian outfits. Their garments are made from hand printed and hand woven fabrics. In 2000, the non-textile range of Fabindia was launched. The brand then introduced personal care products in 2006 and handcrafted jewellery in 2008. • Fabindia uses traditional crafts and knowledge for creating their products. The brand works with talented artisans from rural India. Their motto is to provide beautiful lifestyle products to its urban customers and at the same time, create livelihoods in the rural parts of the country. • India’s largest private platform for traditional techniques, skills and hand-based products. • They have made it to the international level and have opened outlets in Rome, Italy, Dubai, Bahrain etc. • Major portion of products range in textile based. • Other than that they provide non textile, organic products, authentic personal care and handicraft jewellery.
From here this project was taken forward by the whole group of 8 students.
PARENT COMPANY
Fab India Overseas Pvt Lmt.
NO. OF STORES IN INDIA
211 retail stores
TAGLINE
Celebrate India
USP
• Complete Indian products • Promotes Indian crafts.
CATEGORIES
Garment 70% Home furnishings Body care 3% Organic food 2% 200-2500
STORES IN DELHI
PRODUCT RANGE TARGET GROUP
24 stores
25%
Urban upper and middle class families
BRAND STUDY.
• Emphasis is given to both the silhouette as well the craft. • Fab India is emperimentative but minimal with their style. • Their focus is to give authentic meaning of craft, while being acessible and economical. • Their idea is to cater to huge audience at a basic necessity level
Understanding and studying brands identity and aesthetics to take forward as we design the collection.
CRAFTS UNDERTAKEN: • KALAMKARI • IKAT • BAGRU • AJRAKH • BANARASI • CHIKANKARI • KHARI
ORGANIC FURNITURE CERTIFIED HOME DECOR BEAUTY FOOD
HOME LINENS
Pictures collected as primary research of the previous chikankari works of the brand.
COMPETETIVE BRANDS.
LOVE BIRDS OGAAN CORD KILOL RAW MANGO OPUS PHILOSOPHY RANGSUTRA SHADES OF INDIA PATINE ANJUL BHANDARI EK MATRA JAYPORE TRANSLATE NICOBAR THE SHOP
PATCHWORK SEAMLINES COLOR BLOCKING EMBROIDERY PLACEMENTS FOCUSED EMBROIDERY ON TEXTURE EMBROIDERY ON PRINT HANGER DETAIL HIGHLIGHTING SEAMLINES DETAILS ON OPENING MICROPLEATS CREATE TEXTURE WITH EMBROIDERY GATHERED SLEEVES DRAWSTRING VOLUME
These are some pictures for our primary research on different and new trends and details that we could see in market
Lucknow has it’s own rich history and Culture , which is prominenetly reflected to it’s architecture. As it reflects not just the history but the time and generations it has been through. Lucknow’s old architecture was made by the mmughals and have aesthetics from persian art as well as urdu calligraphy.But what Intrigued us the most was something mundane and which has less history as such but still has stories and essence to take from it.That is, the texture, the broken walls, the broken motifs , the gates, the mix of new and old architecture. All these elements reflect and tells about a journey from past to present. It tells the age and it’s value and time. So our inspiration comes from our own understanding and reflection about Lucknow. And thats what we took forward as well to design our collection for Fab India, Rangsutra, Spring Summer 2020.
GROUP MOODBOARD: Reminiscence, traditional, minimal.
INDIVIDUAL COLOR BOARD representing of how I see the and translate the colour pallete which was given to lucknow.
65
203
O.white
132
719
225
141
COLOUR DIRECTION 2
65
203
O.white
132
719
225
280
Colour pallete was given to us by Fab India itself and we chose one colour family of 6 colour and one accent for our collection.
SILHOUETTE AND DETAIL BOARD.
We took inspiration for silhouettes from the history that is mughal’s clothing and traditional costumes. And we tried to contemporarise our understanding of the elements which define the mughal’s clothes like overlapping, volume, panneling, drawstring.
MOTIF.
We derived motifs from the architecture and tried to contemporarise them in a way that is doesn’t lose its identity as chikankari but still in something new and fresh. So that with evolution the originality stays intact.
using embroidery stitches to emphasise the texture of fabric
We tried to translate the idea of motifs on texture by doing embroidery over running stitch , machine stitch or pin tucks.
Embroidery samples done by the group.
Rough initial individual iterations for the assigned category: ETHNIC.
FINAL ITERATIONS.
ITERATIONS ETHNIC BOTTOMS.
ZERO WASTE/ SUSTAINABLE GARMENT.
We were asked to design a zero waste category as well and design a particular method and idea which was then then taken forward by the group. Our idea was to make clothes more versatile, experimentative by making them reversable, oversized and adjustable. Thus making them more engaging and exciting for consumers.
adjustable
Zero waste pattern cutting. sleeve
collar
front pannel
30, 32, 34 can be worn from both the sides , making it reversable
drawstring to adjust to different waist size
excess fabric would gather on the sides
FINAL IDEA.
11 inches length of 16 icnhes sleeve bell sleeve gathered at cuff 10 inches 45 inches length of the garment
embroidery colours
accent color 120 inches total width of hem
y thread
embroidery done on texture of pintucks
ghass patti stitch is used to fill this motif
phanda stitch done using accent color
waist band- 2 inches
lenth of pants 39 inches
15 icnhes
FINAL RANGE. THIS RANGE INCLUDES ONE IDEA BY EVERY STUDENT OF THE GROUP.
WOMEN’S ETHNIC
WOMEN WESTERN
MEN’S ETHNIC
ZERO WASTE