Handloom's Fashion Reset: Next fillip for India’s handmade textiles must come from the young

Is it just algorithmic serendipity or is there really a renewed interest in and respect for Indian handlooms? National Handloom Day went by yesterday (in honour of the Swadeshi Movement that started on August 7, 1905) so a seasonal blip by marketers and influencers was expected. But ever since the event was instituted in 2015, I cannot recall younger people being that enthused to raid their mothers' and grandmothers' cupboards and wear a living legacy. This year they were.

Surprisingly, even the prime minister, using the social media term GRWM - Get Ready With Me - urged Indians to wear handloom on that day. His focus was, obviously, the younger generations, given their preference for visual cues. But by displaying handloom angavastrams, uttariyos, gamosas or whatever that short length of textile is called in your part of India, the PM also, perhaps deliberately, highlighted that handloom does not only mean sarees and bedcovers.

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That change in perception, admittedly, was already being wrought by "indie" labels that have been making handloom fabrics cool by fashioning them into trendy clothes for a few years now. Their predominantly young clientele had thereby realised that the magic word "sustainability" applies to handloom textiles in many ways even if they tend to bleed colour in washing machines. The young are figuring out that by wearing handloom they are also saving the planet.

Even handloom sarees are being taken beyond the traditional regional dyeing and weaving techniques, patterns and colour palettes. Designers are experimenting with using, say, extra weft jamdani weaves or mixing resist-dyed ikat motifs to create funky textures and patterns for handloom sarees that are quite stunning but also a far cry from grandma's beautiful traditional ones. So India's handloom heritage is being imaginatively reinterpreted and passed on to the young.

That entire families' livelihoods hinge on the painstaking produce of pit looms, loin loom, frame looms and fly-shuttle looms all over rural India has never really been brought home to those weaned on fast fashion and "high performance" synthetic, machine-made fabrics. So, the amazing skill and hereditary muscle memory required to weave handloom textiles had disregarded as they were deemed just "craftspeople", several rungs lower than other "professionals".

As they traditionally worked from home - a term that only gained recognition and respect during the pandemic - the sheer dimension of their work could never be brought into a single explanatory visual, unlike say, a giant car factory or even a textile mill. A single weaver family working on a piece of textile for days, weeks or months is not insta-attractive. But there is a new understanding and respect now for what WFM entails and handloom has benefited from this epiphany.

For decades the commendable drive to save handloom produce - and by extension, pure cotton and silk as its core raw material - from being obliterated by garments using cheaper, faster, blended-yarn machine-made textiles, remained confined to rarefied circles or even certain political orientations. The young, the middle and working classes were not really drawn into that charmed circle. Now, thanks to social media, the outreach is wider, and I daresay, more "mass".

It will certainly take some time for Indians to once again turn on a large scale to handloom from the more convenient "modern" textiles. But seeing young people commending them on social media sites now, portends that the fillip to the next phase of Indian handloom's future will be provided by them, and that too, not in the conventional form my generation is used to: sarees, yardage and bedcovers! Next step: when will corporate dressing allow handloom for men too?