My grandmother’s simple cotton hand-knotted Madurai sungudi saris and my mother’s minimal zari Kanjeevarams are my first memories of saris,” remembers Rajeshwari Karthik.
The former IT professional, who worked in London for a nearly a decade moved back to India in 2010 and started her brand Varnavastram (varnam means colour and vastram means attire) in 2016 to bring these vintage textiles back into the limelight.
To revive the best of handloom textiles, the 40-year-old entrepreneur works alongside master craftsmen to lead a resurgence—from the time-honoured Pondurujamdanis to elegant Ikats inspired by Uzbek and Cambodian motifs.
Karthik recently worked with weavers to recreate old designs and techniques which she found in textile books, whose examples were at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. “We recreated a completely natural-dyed Kanjeevaram sari dating back to 1867, which originated in Salem, Tamil Nadu, and was transferred to the V&A archive in 1869. This silk is with adai and meenakari work done in a Kanchi cluster, and the dyeing was done in Hyderabad,” she explains. Salem being her hometown inspired Karthik to give the piece a new life in natural dye with five gm gold zari.
Karthik as a textile revivalist is proud of preserving India’s woven heritage. “These saris are our pride. Handlooms are to be draped with love. I firmly believe that every woman should possess a few heritage weaves to pass on the legacy to their future generations,” she says. Her dream is ambitious: to see these ancient weaves not just survive but thrive in a world where fast fashion often overshadows the timeless. She says, “Every sari, every weave, is a living testament to our cultural identity.”
Among her most remarkable contributions are the Uzbek-inspired Ikat saris. Traditionally, Uzbek looms are too narrow to make saris, but Karthik collaborated with the Pochampally cluster near Hyderabad to bring these bold, colourful motifs to life. “For over two years I have been trying to recreate vintage weaves,” she says. Revival is a tough art form. Especially in textiles, since one has to employ reverse engineering and research lost techniques to understand the original. The high price tag thanks to the special techniques and quality is a deterrent in expanding audiences.
Karthik calls the coordination between dyeing teams and the weavers her biggest challenge. She says, “I find reviving archival finds very challenging. I have done a lot of research and groundwork on natural dyes. It is important that the yarns retain perfect tension while weaving; otherwise, there will be breakage, which will tangle the entire warp.”
Curating contemporary designs in traditional weaves is considered difficult, which the entrepreneur manages to pull off with elan. A USP is the motifs Karthik uses, which are no longer in use: a lotus flower with eight petals, theyaali (mythological creature with the head of the elephant and body of a lion), the rudraksha, the majestic vairaoosi (zari pinstripes), to mention a few.
She confesses, “There is both a lot of hard work and a lot of guesswork.” In the future, she hopes to work on other disappearing weaves like Sickalnayakanpet and Kodalikaruppur saris, which were earlier patronised by the royals of Tanjore, besides reviving natural dye colours in kanchivaram silk with vintage weaves like adai, petni, korvai, and Madras kattam, among others.
Never say dye is not her motto.