Unravelling the Mire of Unsustainability in Indian Luxury Wedding Wear
Are Indian brides forgetting the rich history of Indian weaves and crafts and falling for synthetic, unsustainable wedding wear? How are Bollywood celebrities and mainstream fashion designers responsible for this shift, which adversely affects the sector of heritage art?
By Sharmi Adhikary
Sharmi Adhikary, is a writer, columnist & cultural connoisseur. She sparks conversations and weaves tales on fashion, films, books, relationships and beyond, championing heritage fashion & heirloom traditions with a dash of elegance & wit.
Scenes from a wedding of an upper-middle-class Indian family. We shall stick to scrutinising the clothes. There are hardly any women in katan silk, kora silk, satin silk, khaddi georgette or any other kind of Banarasis. Kanjeevarams, Gadwals, Patolas, and other luxury sarees are also conspicuous in their absence. Ideally, my eyes still search for these go-to-drapes in weddings here, considering they are heritage weaves showcasing the history of the handloom craft of Bharat that women should flaunt. Till a few years ago, at least, that would have been the case with these versatile six yards, which would be aired again for other special functions. The stigma of ‘repeat’ wouldn’t have become such a social plague.
But can we say that about weddings and celebratory events today? For instance, the wedding I mention has the bride in a heavily encrusted synthetic lehenga (stuffed with grotesque cancan) that weighs thrice as her. The bride’s mother barely smiles while greeting the guests in another laborious lehenga instead of an ethereal jamavar or tanchoi. The bride’s sister is forced to take off her jewellery when everyone is distracted during the havan since she cannot get rid of her Manish Malhotra monstrosity. Amongst the guests, I hear a young someone remarking, “Why spend so much on an MM when you can get the same design for cheaper in Pitampura!” I look behind me to find the owner of this voice wearing another crusty outfit that she would probably not dream of repeating at another shaadi. The big guns of the fashion industry have surely inspired a generation of copy masters to create!
Funnily, with all the effort women put into channelling the Bollywood bridal (more like chandeliers) look these days, I wonder whether they realise how wasteful their purchases are. They clearly won’t muster the courage to get into those ‘clothes’ again. But, if these were handwoven or handcrafted luxury sarees, the case would have been different. This is where we must understand how the priorities shifted. Why have the brides and their families shunned India’s textile and crafts heritage to adopt a severely consumerist trope that is unsustainable anyway? How has Bollywood’s glorification of celebratory wear and the permeation of Western theories in the Indian mainstream market jeopardised the position of Indian heritage luxury wear amongst its people? With the wedding season on, this is a good time to probe into the sinister agendas targeted at hitting our local handloom and handicraft economy using soft powers like cinema and social media. Prospective brides in tier one and two cities don’t care that their trousseau purchases ensure the Chinese synthetics rule. They are busy being brainwashed by their favourite Bollywood heroines and social media influencers, apart from the greenwashing done by top couture labels.
The Western construct of USE and THROW
Celebrities might not spell it out in that many words but the consumerist model of use and throw is constantly being peddled through their work and social media handles that are followed en masse. Celebrities do not repeat their clothes, that signal youngsters and their parents that they should take the cue. Considering that Indian heritage weaves and crafts are thoroughly versatile and can be styled in a plethora of ways, celebrities would never glorify them because for them it’s all about encouraging heavy consumption. In that context, popularizing garish, clumsy lehengas in weddings through PR machinery, film and fashion narratives also serves the purpose of ‘wear once and discard’. Call it a status symbol or wasteful behaviour, millennials are being tutored to splurge on poor quality, unsustainable clothes they will not cherish. Contrast this with the heirloom sarees our ancestors owned or how cared for them. Tonnes and tonnes of synthetic apparel are made as fast fashion or wedding couture each year. With the commercial rot setting in, people’s discarded clothes end up on a landfill thus harming the environment. China earns out of this worldwide fixation on cheap synthetics and the West stays merry because use and throw sadly is quite a popular fashion anthem now. Alia Bhatt might be repeating her clothes but is her voice loud enough in the clamour of lopsided marketing gimmicks?
If we refer to films such as Govind Moonis’ Nadiya Ke Paar, we would observe how Hindi films could have taught better if their heart was in the right place. In this Rajshri Production classic, the mother of the bride wears katan silk Banarasis for both marriage ceremonies. The brides are in their Banarasi beauties, too. The sister dons a gota patti and zardozi silk lehenga choli. At a time I find women cribbing about luxury weaves being unaffordable (while splurging on disgusting fast fashion), here is a reminder of how women in villages, too, wore India’s heritage weaves when they had to dress up. Such films showcased luxury weaves testifying how grand and versatile handloom textiles occupied pride of place in the wardrobes across different strata of society. Everything is locally made, carrying the stamp of the region. And yet, Hindi cinema post Raja Hindustani shunned this handmade luxury and adopted a completely imbalanced formula. Why did we let the West, the synthetics, the Karan Johars and Manish Malhotras usurp and destroy it all? The local crafts, weaves, markets, the textile economy…
The Karan Johar brand of wedding wear in cinema
Any fashion enthusiast based in West Asia would tell you how fascinated the Middle East is with Indian wear. But ask for names and they would go gaga about designers like Manish Malhotra, Sidharth Tytler, Falguni and Shane Peacock, Neeta Lulla and so on instead of talking about India’s heritage weaves and crafts that better labels work with. This is a result of Bollywood celebrities (they have a noxious influence on the mass psyche) endorsing overrated and unsustainable creations in films as well as public events. But equating sequined synthetic trash with Indian luxury weaves and crafts is a travesty and proves how little the ignorant audience knows outside of those Karan Joharesque Punjabi wedding and occasion wear touted in moneyed NRI circles as Indian couture!
The nouveau riche swear by garbled Bollywood fashion that has, over the years, distorted the way the ‘khaandani’ actually dress in Punjab (considering Karan Johar has always peddled a distorted Punjabi wedding narrative in his cinema). Remember the scene in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge where a weaver comes home to sell sarees during the run up to Simran’s Shaadi? He throws stunning luxury Banarasis on the bua exclaiming, “Kya khil rahi hain aap!” which proves textiles/crafts were preferred by all sections of people in Indian towns and villages till even a few years ago, especially for occasion wear. The excessive bling began with Kuch Kuch Hota Hain where Johar signed Malhotra after he styled Karishma Kapoor in Raja Hindustani. The urbanites bore the brunt of bad influence after that. The rot has travelled so far and wide that in all North Indian weddings today, this is the overhyped look that gets carried because it is considered the ‘in thing’. The cinematic canvases of films such as Nadiya ke Paar and Geet Gata Chal celebrate Indian crafts throughout. And yet, despite their popularity, a highly distorted commercial agenda was pushed into Bollywood movies post-90s (a superb soft power) that declined the patronage of authentic textiles and craftsmanship of Bharat, especially in the wedding wear segment.
Destroying the Diversity of Indian Wedding Wear
Even though designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee spun a narrative of Indian wear amongst his international clientele and ensured it caught the fancy of the world when Anushka Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Bipasha Basu and all those people wore his creations in their weddings, it led to the creation of a uniform mood board. This was detrimental to the local luxury weaves and crafts of different Indian states. Here’s how.
Weddings of every state have an identifiable charm and that is because of the traditions, rituals followed as well as the clothes and jewellery worn. Be it Banarasis in West Bengal and UP, Gota Patti on silk Poshaks in Rajasthan, Phulkari on silk at Punjabi shaadis, Kanjeevarams in Tamil Nadu, Molakalmurus in Karnataka or Assam Paat silks in Assam, Indian brides carry a distinct look in their weddings that boasts of luxury weaves and crafts of their respective states. Weddings ensured families bought local crafts that generated work in the sector. Sabyasachi ensured he made all brides carry a tried and tested look that got stamped as being popular. Fans of celebrities in trying to copy those looks forgot to heed the original wedding day dress up of their ancestral lands. These couturiers marketed their ware cunningly with huge profits but youngsters were brainwashed to fall for homogenized trends that do not acknowledge the diversity of luxury weaves and crafts of a particular place.
Patronisation is of Paramount Importance
In fashion, we map trends. Let me put this in perspective for those who are ignorant about economics in the fashion industry. No trend germinates without a thrust from the audience. The sector of Indian textiles and crafts also operates likewise. The appreciation and demand for beautiful, authentic work creates a steady supply. The prices get competitive and industry flourishes. This is why the peg of patronization is so important, a point that I will not tire of reiterating especially before people who crib about pricing yet invest in synthetic garbage for designer wedding wear that is in no way cheap.
Ratna Pathak Shah in a recent podcast had said how without enough patronage, only the superficial design will remain but the underlying intricate craft birthing that design will go extinct. As I watched a prominent designer create wedding wear with fabrics printed with Ikat designs while naming the collection Patola, I truly understood the pain with which the actor made the incisive comment.