Her new spin to an old art
Memory often is the fuel of passion. Tarina Sen, who lives in Bhubaneswar is one such chronicler of memories. When she married into a Bengali family in 1987, she was smitten by her mother-in-law’s sartorial style. The traditional jamdani (also known as dhakai) drapes struck Sen as the perfect embodiment of timeless elegance. Years later, and 58 years old now, she has ventured into the realm of ethnic fashion with her eponymous brand.
Jamdani—a delicate, lightweight weave created from fine muslin often described as ‘baftnama’ or woven wind—is her calling card. “I can’t help but think how my mother-in-law would be happy and proud,” says Sen. Originality lies in stepping away from formats but keeping the truth alive. With new age designs, she is moving away from the stereotyped representation of the fabric and also charting a new path for her weavers.
Her specialisation was in zardozi embroidery which uses traditional ikat from Odisha. In 2023, she shifted to jamdani. She travelled to Phulia district in West Bengal and zeroed in on a weavers’ cluster. “When I started, the weavers were quite reluctant to engage with new designs beyond what was etched in their muscle memory through generations. They had been following the same techniques, patterns and motifs down the years. Now in their old age, they wanted to cling to the same,” says Sen. She finally managed to convince a few of them to try a new design vocabulary with a different colour palette.
“My aim was to breathe life into this dying art form. I wanted to encourage the weavers to try something new in the hope that the new generation would become interested in carrying forward this legacy,” says Sen, who believes that the extraordinary talent of Indian craftspeople and weavers deserve more recognition and appreciation. Sen decided to walk the talk. She bought raw textiles from weavers and turned them into finished products at her studio in Bhubaneswar. An entire line of designs takes her approximately four months to create.
Today the designer is working with 15 jamdani weavers, and slowly has managed to bring them around to try innovations. “If we fail to do anything about it, jamdani will vanish in the next decade or so. I wish to take it beyond the apparel concept and transform it into art, which I believe it is born for,” says Sen, who for the Artix: 3.0 art fair in Delhi commissioned four handwoven tapestries—a series of three titled Riding the Tiger, and another one dedicated to Goddess Durga, titled Unsettled Dust. “It was quite a task convincing the weavers to take up this work. They had never worked on such a colour palette. They had to go beyond their age-learned skills. Weaving each tapestry took almost 11 months,” she says.
Her conviction was vindicated after all the pieces were sold out. “In fact, we were commissioned to do tapestry of the Charminar in Hyderabad in the new style,” smiles Sen. She is not looking to make major changes to the construct. “Don’t they say, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’?”