January 2020 Edition Apparel January 2020 issue | Seite 58

DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT
A Varicoloured Delight
With one of his most recent projects, award-winning designer Gaurang Shah reaffirms that
fashion and art, indeed, emerge from the same core. Anurima Das writes.
Designer Gaurang Shah and his team recreated
30 paintings of Raja Ravi Varma on saris. Nearly
600 shades of yarn and natural-dye specialists
were required to complete this project. To begin
with, samples of yarn were developed, and these
ranged from fluorescent greens to lilacs, peachy
pinks to sea blues—hues that one normally does
not come across in natural dyes. Each colour
was brought to life through many stages of
development—applying the dye, dipping the
yarn in alum and drying, then applying another
colour that neutralises the tone, and dipping it
once more in alum.
This project, conceived in collaboration with the
Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, began with
Gaurang procuring more than 50 of the painter’s
lithographs. All the weaving was done on khadi
saris, which is hoped to be showcased in different
museums worldwide.
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I APPAREL I
January 2020