To see someone pick up our linen sari over a Sabyasachi creation at one of our earlier shows at Mumbai’s Artisans Art Gallery made me feel that we have broken a mould. Linen could now be considered a sari fabric,” says Anavila Misra, the creative director of her eponymously titled label Anavila, which she founded in 2011. Linen gets crushed easily and is a difficult yarn to work with.“To hand weave a sari length fabric out of linen yarn was a nightmare. It still is,” adds Misra. So, she looked for ways to make it easier. Working along with traditional artisans, she treated the yarn to create longer, finer yet unbreakable strands. Later, she added zari and resham too to give some colour to the fabric. Having worked with artisans during her NIFT Delhi days, it wasn’t difficult to convince them. It was, in fact, during her earlier stints with artisans that she thought of starting her own label. Working on a Ministry of Rural Development project, she realised that much can be done with traditional crafts and that designers must do everything in their capacity to put it on a global platform. “I could not think of working for a corporate house after that,” she says.
Today, she works with 90 weavers from across India and 12 women artisans from Jharkhand, giving a platform to their craft. This year, she took their creation to the ramp when she showcased at Lakme Fashion Week Winter/Festive show in Mumbai. The collection—Secret Life of the Forest—created in collaboration with artisans from Jharkhand was inspired by foliage and mysterious creatures of forests. Konkona Sen Sharmawas the showstopper. Keeping hand-woven linen as the basic fabric choice, she used jamdani weaves, batik, sujani, khatwa and block printing for saris in neutral colours such as ecru, burnt rose, black, indigo, white, sap green and ochre. Misra features women artisans (posing in her creations) in her photo shoots. Celebrity endorsements, according to her, are also a way of communicating with customers. “We, as customers, are subconsciously driven by our role models and celebrities,” she says. Actors like Kajol, Vidya Balan and Rani Mukherjee have been spotted in Anavila sarees in subtle colours and nature-inspired patterns.
Nature, in fact, has been the central theme for two major collections and four smaller collections that come out every year. She works outs colour palette, patterns and prints along with her team of six designers. The samples are then sent to looms in tribal clusters where weavers create fabrics. The pieces are finished at a studio workshop in Mumbai and are priced between Rs 12,000 and Rs 32,000. “We’re working on collections in a lower price bracket,” Misra points out. She’s also working on a summer collection under the popular Mohenjo-Daro range which will be launched in 2015 at all ten stores that she retails from that include Ogaan and en Inde in Delhi, Amethyst in Chennai, Raintree, Cinnamon, Collage and Basava Ambara in Bangalore, and Bombay Electric and Bungalow 8 in Mumbai.