There are 89 ways to wear a sari, and this website can teach you how in just 2 minutes

BENGALURU: Anishaa Taraporvala has been wearing saris since she was a school student. One of the few at a wedding who could help friends drape a sari, the 27-year-old communication professional inherited the love of the nine yards from her grandmother. Yet the half-Parsi Taraporvala never had the chance to wear the sari in a Parsi drape as her dad’s family had mostly male members. But that was until she came across The Sari Series on social media, where she discovered how to wear a Sari in a traditional Parsi drape, among many others.

A documentary project by Bengaluru-based Malika Verma Kashyap, The Sari Series is helping urban Indian women like Taraporvala discover 89 ways of wearing the sari through a bunch of 2-minute how-to-drape videos as part of a digital anthology project that was launched in October.

No. 55 Kaatakari Sari Drape - Maharashtra, India #TheSariSeries #sari #saree #drape #India #BorderandFall

A post shared by The Sari Series (@thesariseries) on Oct 8, 2017 at 8:21pm PDT

Born and raised in Montreal, Canada, Kashyap’s creative agency Border & Fall launched the project when she felt the need for adapting the sari to the daily lives of urban Indian women who love wearing saris but often hesitate to experiment with the garment because of its formal avatar.

The @galleryske and @photoink ladies draped in #TheSariSeries drapes. Wearing @raw_mango saris at @indiaartfair last month. Image: @borderandfall and 8am co-draping courtesy of @rashmivarma. #sari #saree #drape #India #thesariseries #borderandfall #galleryske #photoink #rawmango #indiaartfair

A post shared by Border&Fall (@borderandfall) on Mar 12, 2018 at 3:33am PDT

In the works since January 2016, The Sari Series, along with three films, traces the journey of the nine yards from the past, present to the future. The 89 how-to videos are assorted by region, descriptive imagery and a set of instructions for each drape that teach techniques like pleating and knotting and are available to viewers through a digital platform and You Tube. “While books on sari draping are academic and not accessible, our idea was to use the power of digital communication and make its available to a wider audience,” she says. The project drew from the research of textile scholar Rta Kapur Chishti’s book ‘Saris: Tradition and Beyond’, one of the early collaborators for the anthology.



With over 2,000 hours of viewership of these videos, the audience demographic has been varied. “We have 40% male and 60% female viewership from India, US, UK, Canada among other regions,” she adds.

The independent films, by directors Bon Duke, Pooja Kaul and Q, are currently travelling through offline screenings at film festivals and have been featured at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.