BENGALURU: The young brigade of Bollywood has redefined being stylish yet comfortable. They are now acing the ‘easy look’ with Schiffli designs. While we have seen Ananya Pandey and Shanaya Kapoor donning dresses with the fabric in question, recently Khushi Kapoor wore its kurta-pyjama set at one of the promotions of her latest movie The Archies.
Khushi’s set is from a brand known for its everyday indie wear. City-based fashion and content creator Divya Maben too picked a similar one from their latest collection. “I had bought it way before I saw Khushi Kapoor wearing it. The design is classic, we have all grown up wearing frocks made of that fabric. It has that old-world charm and I can totally understand why her stylist would have picked it for her,” says Maben
The designs have taken the high-street style brand by storm with various ones offering multiple options and colours in different designs. Allivia Dan Langstieh, who studies at St Joseph’s University and likes to keep up with the trend, says, “I picked mine from an MNC clothing brand after seeing many celebrities wearing it. It’s fun and gives a holiday feel. Since it is quite warm these days, it goes well with the weather,” says Langstieh.
If a white wardrobe is your thing, fashion designer Susan Fernandes, who helms a city-based sustainable brand, has a whole collection of white shirts with Schiffli designs. “We call it hakoba, which was very popular when we were growing up. The collection is classic, cool, summerly and comfortable. The embroidery design could be traditional but we have used it in a contemporary way. I have used the placement of the embroidered holes in an interesting way,” says Fernandes, whose collection starts from Rs 2,999++ and comes in five different sizes.
You don’t have to walk into a store to own it. Being a classic design, it could be something found in your mother’s closet. You could probably quickly snip and stitch it into new designs, just like what Ananya Babu did. “I saw this fabric in my mother’s wardrobe. I always loved it and since it was common, I didn’t think much of it. Suddenly, there is a boom and every youngster, especially celebs, is wearing dresses in this style. I now have a slit skirt and a boat-neck top, which my mom stitched,” says the jewellery designer.
Tracing the roots
Schiffli embroidery is a type of machine embroidery that uses lock stitches to create patterns on lace fabric. Isaak Gröbli first came up with Schiffli machine embroidery in 1863. He developed a prototype in Uzwil, Switzerland. In 1864, JJ Rieter helped to further develop the invention in Winterthur.