That's a Wrap!

From "Hinduism Today", June Edition

How a French anthropologist fell for an unusual sari and rescued dozens of Indian drapes from extinction.

By SHIKHA MALAVIYA, MINNESOTA

It is a blustery, cold afternoon as I make my way to the Goldstein Gallery and the University of Minnesota's School of Apparel and Design. Opening the auditorium door, I make out the silhouettes of roughly 200 people focused on a slide of a Tamil woman whose sari wraps around her knees and divides in the middle, a common style among rural working women. The lights turn on, and in the front of the auditorium a petite, blond-haired woman dressed in a navy blue silk sari deftly demonstrates that very style from the slide on a volunteer while explaining its method in a lilting French accent. The audience stares in awe as anthropologist Chantal Boulanger proceeds to unravel the mysteries of sari draping.

The sari, a versatile female garment of ancient Indian origin, has enthralled and mystified many in its variety of texture, design, size and draping style. While many scholars document the intricacies of the sari's myriad colors, fabrics and patterns, few, if any, have closely examined draping styles. French anthropologist Chantal Boulanger hopes to change that. Boulanger is the author of Saris: An Illustrated Guide to the Indian Art of Draping. In her book, Boulanger documents and lucidly illustrates more than 100 sari drapes, divided loosely into families and sub-families where possible, based on certain basic draping techniques. By doing so, Boulanger is the first scholar to define the art of sari draping and give its study a legitimacy that goes beyond mere fashion.

Boulanger's book came to life in an exhibition presented by the University of Minnesota's Goldstein Gallery January 25-March 1, aptly called "The Indian Sari: Draping Bodies, Revealing Lives." It was the first sari exhibition to accentuate draping techniques rather than texture, or design aspects. For Boulanger, it all began six years ago when a unique sari drape at a wedding in South India sparked her interest. "I saw a drape with pleats on the side and its border in the back. I asked how to do it, but no one knew."

Boulanger, having studied Tamil temple priests for the past fifteen years, encountered various sari drapes in her field work, but never imagined they would one day become the object of her study. A trip to a research center in Pondicherry turned up little information on the "wedding sari" drape, and her inquiries to Tamil women followed suit. Finally, an old woman identified the wedding sari as a dying drape worn by peasant women from the region of Tondaimandalamam, in Tamil Nadu. Many young women no longer wore such styles because they didn't want to be identified as a peasant or a lower cast. Boulanger realized that many of these drapes at times intricate, functional, and in most cases symbolic of religion and social status -- carried a certain part of Indian women's history, and that it would vanish without a trace if not recorded soon.

Zigzagging across the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal from 1990-1997, Boulanger visited big cities and remote villages. Taking notes and photos of diverse sari drapes was a constant ritual, even if it meant stopping women on the street. But this wasn't enough to cognize intricacies of the wrapping art. "I realized the only way to remember these saris was to try them again and again," Boulanger shared with HlNDUISM TODAY. She practiced until she got them right, and wore saris under every possible circumstance to personally experience how saris work in daily life. "Whenever Indian women taught me how to wear a sari, they missed essential steps I had to discover on my own." Secrets such as knotting a sari instead of just tucking it into a petticoat came with trial and error. Now a bonafide expert in more than eighty drapes, Boulanger is an inspiration to most of us Hindu women who barely know a handful.

Dissection: As Boulanger organized her information, she realized most sari drapes could be categorized into families. On grouping various drapes, Boulanger found the necessity of a glossary to identify each part of a sari. "Every sari starts with tying it tightly, whether on the waist or chest. So I decided to call it the closing". Boulanger enlisted words from Sanskrit and Tamil because "I couldn't just write, 'tie this end to that end.'" As a result, she terms the part of the sari from which the drape begins, mundi, and the part thrown over the shoulder, pallav. The main part of the sari is the body. The edges are the upper and lower borders.

While Boulanger created a working glossary of the sari, she feels most successful in arranging the sari into families. Studies preceding Boulanger's work grouped drapes according to region or state, so she initially followed suit. But as research progressed, she realized that draping styles crossed regions, and by focusing on method, found that most sari drapes could fit into four main families. Many drapes overlapped families, indicating migration of a group from one region to another and some saris were too unique to fit within any family but the grouping of saris revealed many things. "I saw dhoti styles worn mainly by the Brahmins," shares Boulanger, "while veshti-styles drapes appeared on other classes." In this context, Boulanger applauds the modern Nivi drape, with its pleats in front and pallav over the left shoulder, calling it the egalitarian sari because, as she enthuses, "It crosses boundaries of class and caste, making all women equal in the eyes of others."

With their visual appeal and social context, Boulanger dreamed of a sari exhibition. But as she pitched this idea to friends and colleagues, they urged her to write a book to supplement it. Boulanger labored five years and finished in 1997, her biggest challenge being the 7O0 illustrations redrawn painstakingly until accurate. The exhibition of Boulanger's work, though not as extensive as her book, would marry the aesthetic importance of drapes with its cultural implications.

Drape display: The Goldstein exhibit rendered sari draping with an authenticity provoking visitors to feel transported to India. Call it coincidence or kismet that student curators Hazel Lutz and Susheela Hoeffer both sojourned in India, and Jean Ross, responsible for exhibit design, visited India and Pakistan. Lutz and Hoeffer primarily focused on drape families and technique, but also included saris in various contexts; such as photographs, a wall of artwork (including a sketch by world-renowed artist Jamini Roy), a display of blouse styles, Indian dolls dressed in saris, and hanging saris as well, because as Hoeffer observed, "It's hard to visualizes the mass of a sari as a flat piece of cloth when it is draped on the body."

Lutz, who is co-writing a book on dress and culture, saw the exhibition as a way to "fully appreciate the complexity of drapes, and drop stereotypes. We are showing that there innovation within confines of a sari, and tradition is fashionable as well as practical." Ross added a rural touch to the exhibition by painting the walls saffron and the top with a red, stenciled border, reminiscent of villages in India and Pakistan. Placement of drapes was important, too, and Ross drew inspiration from the small, winding streets of Indian villages. With Boulanger's work as their focus, and their individual experiences in India to draw from, Lutz, Hoeffer and Ross turned an intimate gallery into a colorful Indian oasis of art and savoir-faire.

The exhibition drew over 2O0 on opening day, some out of curiosity, others to learn. Regardless of motives, visitors left the exhibit with fresh knowledge. As Mani Subramaniam, native of India and business professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management states, "On my next visit to India, I'll definitely be looking at saris more carefully, even though I have seen them all my Iife." A fitting compliment for Chantal Boulanger and her work, and for women worldwide who make the sari an integral part of their lives.