Ritu Kumar

#RKArchives | via @ritu.ritukumar The impact of the odhani like the sari comes not just from the beauty of the textile, but also from the way it is draped. Traditionally different coloured odhanis were worn during different festive days such as Holi, Teej, and Diwali. Fanny Parkes’ description of the odhani from a zenana in the early 19th century is captivating. It describes groups of women gathered in the zenana, all elegantly draped in shimmering, richly decorated cloth- “The deputtah is a useful envelope, and the most graceful part of the whole female costume... on gala days, gold ano silver and gauze tissues are in great request, as is also the fine Indian muslin manufactured at Decca - transparent and soft as the web of the gossamer spider; this is called shabnam (night dew) from its delicate texture and is procured at great expense, even in India. Some deputtahs are formed of gold-worked muslin, English crape, coloured gauze, etc. On ordinary occasions ladies wear them simply bound with silver riband, but for dress, they are richly trimmed with embroidery and bullion fringes which add much to the splendour of the scene, when two or three hundred females are collected together in an assembly. #RituKumar #RKArchives #RKArchives #RituKumar

| via @ritu.ritukumar Travelling on the Silk Road in Uzbekistan, we were on the search for the origin of the famous ikat. Margilon in Fergana Valley with its silk factories held the answers...Margilon’s bazar known as Kumptepa has been around since the 4th century, its merchant clans remaining key players in Central Asia’s commerce and silk trade until the last few decades of Soviet rule. I had high hopes of finding several varieties of the famed ikat here.The bazar threw up hundreds of options-at very cheap, wholesale prices-of ikats from factories and workshops from all over Margilon. There were silk, cotton and some synthetic ikats too which were aesthetically underwhelming. What I noticed instantly was that some substance of the original ikats seems to have been lost. Most appeared shiny, flat and devoid of subtle patterns and colour palettes of the traditional Fergana variety.Upon reflecting on what exactly was missing in these ikats compared to the revival fabrics I was working with in the villages of Odisha or the antiques found in museums up and down Uzbekistan, I settled on an answer. It was that they were using modern tie-and-dye techniques, that is, employing a lathe and plastic to dye the yarn so as to prevent any dye leakage, which deterred the the fuzzy, cloudlike effect of the old ikats. Increasing mechanisation had transformed these handicrafts as they rolled out millions of meters of iridescent rainbows of dubious sensibility each year #RKArchive

| via @ritu.ritukumar Judith AnnIn the 1970s, I revived small printing units in Srirampur, restoring ancient processes, patterns, and colours.Surrounded by nature, I watched the artisans for hours, learning the meditative work of degumming, printing, and steaming silk - it was like being inside a Daniell painting.At the time we chiefly made saris and didn’t have a proper business. However, we were exporting some scarves to America. Serendipitously, an enterprising New York buyer, Judy Eagen, the brain behind Judith Ann - a major garments store on 7th Avenue, dropped by a show at the Sheraton Hotel where a few of our scarves were on display. She took one look at the scarves and was smitten. They were on large silk squares, in jewel colours, with classically Indian motifs.Some time later Judy flew to Calcutta. My husband, Shashi, and I met her in a dodgy hotel room, done up in red velvet and brimming with flowers. She wore these wild, floating, white clothes and walked in looking like Mother Superior and this encounter started one of the craziest adventures in my life.After visiting the factory in Srirampur, she carried back some scarves, and her father, Mr Egan, took them to Bergdorf Goodmans’ and other stores. He was told, that they wanted dresses, not scarves. With great apprehension and some arm-twisting by Judy, he ordered 200 dresses from us.However, I’d never made a dress in my life! So we joined two scarves up on the sides and cut one straight V-neck with a master called Abdul Hamid. He understood how to cut the V but he had no idea what we wanted, so we just stitched the rest of the dress on two sides. You couldn’t get zippers in India then, so I requested Kuku Bhagat, then a young designer, to put in some tassels so that the neck could be tied up and off went the dresses to New York.Soon enough a message from New York arrived that read “It doesn’t fit a dog.” It took me a minute to understand what Mr Egan meant. The boobs were falling out from either side! We managed to convert those dresses into nightgowns, by stitching in a panel on the side, but through this experience we learned how to make dresses. #rkarchives

Many hands make beautiful work | Process - Screen Printing IForce dye on to a surface through a prepared screen of fine material so as to create a picture or pattern.Ritu Kumar has been making her own silk print designs for 50 years in Kolkata. They say the water of the Hoogly river adds a vintage to the color, thereby making the silk prints of this region unique. #rkarchives

| via @ritu.ritukumar A Special Campaign With Prabuddha Dasgupta and Lakshmi MenonWe did this photoshoot for our bridal collection line; Ri Ritu Kumar in the Fall/Winter of 2009/2010. With Paris as its backdrop, it was totally Amrish kumar ‘s vision.Amrish had spent a lot of time researching in Paris then and I recall him staying in a tiny one-bedroom in North Paris. He’d been talking to the photographer, Prabuddha Dasgupta about doing a campaign for Ri. Until then, Ri had been photographed in a typical Indian aesthetic and he wanted to give it a bit of a twist and make it more global in its style. So, for example, some garments you see here are kurtas, with the lining cut out and styled like dresses instead of sets.As luck would have it Prabuddha and the model Menon Lakshmi were in Paris around the same time Amrish was and they got to work. So, Amrish packed a suitcase with some key pieces and along with Prabuddha started looking for locations for the shoot. While initially, the idea was for it to take place on the roots of Paris, they settled on these gardens in the North of Paris. They got a friend to do the make-up and that was the extent of the production as such, it was very guerrilla but as you can see the results were incredible. #RKarchives #rkarchives

A photograph of Mrs.Ritu Kumar from the late 1980s, browsing through textile books. #RkArchives