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Help save the art of draped clothes:
From "SARIS: AN ILLUSTRATED
GUIDE TO THE INDIAN ART OF DRAPING"
by C. Boulanger.
Pour avoir le texte en français, écrivez-moi. Merci.
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Everywhere in the world people give up their traditional garments
for "Western clothes". From the richest Saudi wives
who can afford to wear France's "Haute Couture" under
their Islamic veils to the poorest slum-dweller of Manila in nondescript
T-shirt and blue jeans, daily dress is no more a statement of
identity, but rather one of wealth and social class. Our clothes
makes us citizens of the world. Except for Indian women, and even
men to a large extent.
Before 1947, India did not exist. It was a collection of small
kingdoms and separate British territories. In each of these, there
was a great variety of castes and tribes. Each group felt apart
and there was no subcontinent solidarity at any level, even among
Hindus (Hinduism fully reflects ethnic variety). It took Mahatma
Gandhi to unite these thousands of castes, people and tribes,
and this only at a fairly superficial level, especially when it
comes to South India where State culture comes first.
Indians, too, are giving up the garments that marked their caste
or their culture. Now they show their "Indianity" by
wearing the modern sari (or, for men and young women, other specific
clothes like the punjabi, the "Nehru style", etc.).
For the great majority of them, belonging to India is already
a big step, the rest of the world can wait.
The modern sari is, in this context, a revolution, a truly egalitarian,
democratic drape. It shows a real modernity, leading Indian women
towards a new society. It is a strong, marked break with the preceding
century, in which the number of drapes increased and diversified
to the effect that almost each local caste had its own particular
style.
The past century or so has been very important for the art of
draping in India. It is certain that at no other time in the world's
history will we find such a large and meaningful variety of drapes.
It is almost already too late to study these "traditional"
saris. I remember the day I saw a photograph of the flower seller's
sari. I wondered how this drape could be achieved and couldn't
sleep that night until I had figured it out. I managed to understand
this one, but many (the Koli drape for instance) required real
field study, with the women who still wear them.
We cannot stop time and evolution. Education and progress are
desirable, and also inevitable. But if we fight hard and spend
millions to save endangered animal species, why not make a little
effort to preserve human cultural heritage too ? Drapes are
an important part of India's culture, yet not much has been done
to record and understand their variety.
There are so many fields in India to be researched, such huge
parts of culture and history that have barely been studied with
any objectivity, that to spend time on the art of draping may
seem utterly futile. Indian civilisation has too often been understood
through the exclusive use of Sanskrit, a language spoken by a
tiny male minority. The women I met usually spoke only a couple
of local languages or dialects. For too many scholars, they are
only illiterate women, in other words, nothing.
Because most of their rituals, culture, and gestures when draping
a sari have never been described in Sanskrit, they are deemed
uninteresting. Yet, it was a great privilege for me to meet them
and learn from them not only how to drape, but often some more
of their traditions, what they thought important to teach me.
The woman who taught me the Pullaiyar sari was about 4 feet tall,
and so old that no-one in the village knew her age. She was illiterate
and spoke a dialect of Tamil I hardly understood. But I could
see she was happy to give me what she clearly perceived as part
of her culture and identity. When I left she took my hand and
said : "Go and tell others who we are." From her
village, I walked several miles through the jungle to the nearest
road - a mountain road partially destroyed by the rains - and
eventually came back to France, keeping the photograph I had taken
of her as a treasure.
Now she is probably dead, but not the drape she was the last one
to wear. Her children live in a better society, and are a little
less "untouchable" than she was. Her daughters wear
pinkosus (the most popular Tamil village saris), her grand-daughters
modern saris. Does it mean that her life was totally unimportant
? That her culture was not worth anything ? Is peasant, low-class
India (non-Brahmin...) so meaningless that it doesn't deserve
study outside what Sanskrit texts tell us about it ? More and
more scientists don't think so. Yet until now no-one has ever
had any interest in the way the different styles of saris (especially
those worn by "low-caste" and tribal women) are draped.
I didn't make this lengthy and difficult research for the past.
I made it for the future. This book is not an achievement, but
a beginning. I hope it will raise an interest in drapes, not only
in India but in general. Archeologists, ethnologists, artists,
stylists, etc. need such studies to understand the clothing of
the past, present and future.
To a large part, saris are also the expression of women's creativity
and could become anyone's inspiration. I don't think that these
drapes should simply be recorded and have for only future the
dust of libraries. Most of us, Westerners, think that people drape
because they don't know how to stitch. This wasn't true of the
Romans, and Indians have always had additional stitched garments.
Even though Indian women, clad in their elegant saris, evoke in
us visions of our Antiquity, they live right now in the 20th century.
Drapes have many advantages over stitched clothes, especially
when beauty is an important value. Saris are much more practical
than we think, especially since they can be so easily modified.
Saris are fun to wear. From the material of this book, they can
be tried by anyone, and more styles can be created. By teaching
workshops on draping, I learned that there is for each woman one
drape that fits her perfectly. It's not often the modern sari,
and can be any of the styles in my book on "Indian Drapes",
or even one the woman invents for herself. I also made this work
for anybody who wants, at least once, to wear a drape, any kind
of drape.
Draping is an art. I hope my book will help it take its place
as a heritage of mankind.
SARIS: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE INDIAN
ART OF DRAPING
Chantal Boulanger :shakti@clara.net Important: In order to avoid SPAM and viruses, please include the word: "sari" in the subject of your email. Thank you.
78 Hammersmith Bridge Road, London W6 9DB, Great Britain