Hollywood is helping to put Indian craftwork on the map. For years now, the high-end French labels like Dior, Balenciaga, and also Christian Louboutin have been outsourcing their applied decoration (like embroidery) to India.
The street-fashion brands like Zara, Mango, Promod, and Levi’s produce many of their clothes in India, too. It is a big business with a dark underbelly, there have been years of reports of ongoing mistreatment of the sweatshop laborers and homeworkers forced to manufacture clothes on their kitchen floors for the deplorable pay.
However, the Indian textile industry is not prized by foreigners just for its cheap labor and the entertainment industry in the West is out to prove it.
With Hollywood movies and also English-language TV shows indulging in the beauty of Indian textiles, the skills of the country’s craftsmen are in the spotlight. Big name production houses are not expecting Indian manufacturers to churn out a ton of cheap costumes. They are ordering one-of-a-kind outfits and also paying people well to create them. Slowly but surely, the perception of the Indian handicrafts industry is undergoing a makeover soon.
The Disney’s wildly successful live-action remake of the 1991 fairytale Beauty and the Beast is the latest movie to call on the India’s embroidery prowess. The movie’s costume designer Jacqueline Durran dressed Belle, which is played by Emma Watson, in an intricate bodice is created in India. The hand-stitched flower patterns were designed by Kusam and Juma, a pair of the artisan brothers from the west-Indian state of Gujarat. They used a fine chain-stitch technique called as “Aari work” on the garment.
Narendra Modi pays tribute to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev on Shaheed Diwas
The other costumes are not always as outwardly Indian as Belle’s bodice. For instance, when Jon Snow, one of the heros in the HBO’s Game of Thrones, hung up the black cloak of a Night’s Watch, he slipped into the set of armor and a pelt, both made in the northern India, as Times of India reported.
RS Windlass And Sons, the team behind the Game of Thrones outfit, also supplied props and costumes for the big-budget TV shows like Rome and The Tudors as well as movies like 300 and the Batman Begins. The company’s Dehradun outpost manufactures swords, armor, and other metalwork for the big and also small screens.
While creating a little on-screen magic with the Indian embroidery is not going to make India a world leader in the craft market tomorrow which must be complemented by “additional financing and tax breaks for the handloom industry,” Bandana Tiwari wrote for the Business of Fashion, it is one way to help the India’s handicraft legacy gain recognition and reverence. Many prolific Indian designers such as Ritu Kumar, Neeta Lulla, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Anita Dongre and Rohit Bal already use handwoven fabrics and also hand embroidery in their collections. With foreigners taking note too, the India’s craftsmen could be gearing up to reach new heights.
Mrudula Duddempudi.
