Storm in a designer deal coup

 

I am not a follower of any fashion trends. Not that it matters. I have always followed my heart, with an eye on my purse.  Over the weekend I could see a war had erupted on social media and at the receiving end was a super popular Indian designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee. I first thought it was about the models or the photos he had used. Or the multiple magazine covers that featured his new range. Never mind, that would hardly ever get any storm of opinions against. The opposition is not towards the designs or models but about a commercial deal, I learnt later. Furore was over his tie up with global brand H&M and daring to bring it down to aam janta through online platforms like Myntra and price it “affordable”.

I follow him, Anita Dongre among the few designers just as a curious news person than a fashion follower. I have never stepped into any of their stores. Honestly, I can’t afford. I hated Sabyasachi when he took the Kanjivaram sarees, fully woven, complete pieces, giving it some unwanted embellishment and selling them as his designer sarees. Who cares about sarees anyway, so perhaps there weren’t protests when he did such stuff. To me the saree belonged to the craftsperson who made it, as the designer didn’t have much to contribute in that original creation. Sabyasachis of the world went without being questioned about that “designer” part. Be it Anita or Sabyasachi, they all thrived on the back of our artists, our craftspeople. No one questioned them as to how much they paid the workers and what margins they have on such products. It is free market, and labels get the price they deserve. Those who can afford, buy them.

The storm in Sabyasachi’s tea cup over a tie-up with Swedish H&M chain and putting the “low priced” “mass produced” stuff on online platform. I only looked at the detestable way of presenting the range on insta, it failed to inspire one to go beyond that and check what products or designs were on offer. Soon I realised that there was a mob out there condemning and cancelling him. What were they protesting? That a designer like him shouldn’t collaborate with a brand like H&M that has poor labour standards? I know nothing about H&M so I cannot comment on that. I hear from a friend that H&M is far more “affordable” than many of the other foreign brands. That is all I could check. Second objection was that he was doing would lead to cultural appropriation. Tell me, this day and age, when most of our precious designs are available in museums like Victoria & Albert, London, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the likes. In some of the best books on textiles published by foreign authors. How do you prevent anyone from copying them?

Protestors were drawing comparison to the fact that the British drained India of its textile resources, and how the “companies” stole our textile heritage and left us poor. Valid accusation about what those European colonies did to us. They stole our Kalamkaris and Chintz and mass-produced printed fabrics. That was a time when we had no resources to prevent it, no markets of our own, and ability to mechanize to beat them in their game. Are we in the same league today? We produce more polyester yarn than most of those European nations put together. We produce more mass clothing than anyone else, perhaps China would beat us to that. In a curious turn of things, I found a designer from Kolkata re-creating a William Morris design on a saree. How much has the world come around, that we are printing Morris designs here in India. Just a day before I got a peak into a woven Morris design from our own weavers. We need mass clothing, and there was no way we could have abandoned either polyester or power looms. 

That said, this controversy has flagged appropriating a traditional design without acknowledging the craft or crafts persons. We have been very enthusiastic about registering Geographical Indicators for our textiles. I have been for long saying that it can only grant a certain “prestige” and nothing more. At Kanchipuram, majority of what gets sold today as Kanjivaram sarees are neither original in yarn, design nor are they manufactured in the looms of Kanchi. So, how are we protecting our artists? How many retailers in Kanchipuram can one take action for not selling original Kanjivaram? Is it even possible to get a restraining order on any other weaving clusters from producing a Kanjivaram lookalike? Last year just into the first two months of the pandemic I got a SOS from an Arani weaver we had known for over 25 years. He wanted an order as he was languishing without work. I paid more for the saree he wove than what I would have paid for it in any of the big shops. When I showed him a price tag and asked him how can he charge me a little over what that retail price tag in a retail chain, he kept saying “kattupadi aagathumma”. He said it isn’t possible for him to price his product that low. That is the reality. The master weavers, big stores play volume game, paying less for the weavers. How are we going to challenge that? Are the stores to be blamed, or the high labour cost prevailing in certain clusters? Each cluster, each weave, each fabric has a different story, and I don’t think we have detailed stories, cost-benefit analysis on every one of them. Similar story unfolded when I reached out to an artist in Gujarat. When I first saw his sarees in an online portal, every piece was “sold out”. Later he made one for me. The price he was asking was more than what the portal advertised. He said the same thing. That he can’t work at the prices the portal is paying and that is why he wanted to work directly with customers. Online retailers are doing a great job bringing some fabulous crafts that otherwise wouldn’t have been accessible to many of us. But, may be not all are fair when it comes to pricing. Or, they are looking at the price a piece would command in the market, ignoring pricing in terms of cost for the creator, for the sake of commerce.

There was a time when Madurai Sungudi was a common, affordable and long-lasting saree that every household in Tamil Nadu would have owned. Couple of years ago, I literally roamed around the streets of Madurai looking for an original Sungudi. The labour market had changed, the ladies of the Saurashtra household who used to do the hand knots had stopped them long back and hence the tie and dye, the bandhej had simply vanished from Madurai. Forget the wax resist printing that was being sold as Sungudi, screen printed powerloom sarees ruled the markets, and continue to do so. While my friend worked on revival and got us all a few pieces of real Madurai Sungudi there is no way the fakes are going to go away. The real Sungudi would cost upwards of Rs 6000. How would anyone who is looking for a Rs 600 Sungudi going to be discerning and hunt for the original? Who are the custodians of the craft?

When I visited Kalahasti, the pen kalamkari artists were crying that cheap screen prints of their designs as their biggest problem. Later I got to know that one of the award-winning artist’s son himself was producing such prints in his factory alongside the original hand drawn Kalamkaris. There are many who sell both side by side. This is not just our problem. I realised that the mass-produced copies are a universal problem. At Yogyakarta, considered the batik capital, I saw rows and rows of shops selling only printed batiks. How can one even prevent this? I learnt it the hard way, to be personally discerning and a responsible customer. Of course, it is a limited knowledge given the vast repertoire of crafts in this nation.

It is in that backdrop I was looking at the protests over Sabyasachi – H&M tie-up. I would hold Sabyasachi to task if he had lied that he was selling Sanganeri hand block prints and delivered a piece which was a fake digital print delivered on synthetic fabrics. I would take him to task if he had lied that it is ‘Made in India’ but delivered a product mass produced in some nation that beats us in labour cost with its sweat shops. What I could see from his posts on Insta were that he called them some “chic boho” or whatever. I hardly saw any mention of Made in India, or handmade, handcrafted in India or any such. So, what were the protests about. The uproar in the first place seemed to be about “how they hell can you tie-up with a brand like H&M”. “How can you sell something which is not distinctly crafted in India or by our artisan?” While I would love a big designer, a big global brand to host Indian art and craft I do not understand how someone can be held responsible for not doing it. There are many Indian artists who go to Cannes every year. How many have ever worn an Indian outfit? Therefore, what logic is it to hold a designer responsible for an imagined grouse, that his H&M line would rob our artists of their craft just as British stole our textile business. Many are producing hand block designs on digital prints, across the country. How does one even sue Sabyasachi for violating a Sanganeri GI? If legally we cannot hold him responsible for any violation what are we doing creating a storm about a tie-up that an Indian designer for the first time has had with a large global brand? I don’t care about Sabyasachi. Doesn’t matter to me if he was brought on his knees to apologize. What shocks me is the audacity of a mob to create this cancel culture. What sense does it make to question someone’s commercial deal? If it violates any legal provision, prosecute, don’t just protest. But, this business of “I am the thekedar of Indian culture and crafts and you have violated it by tying up with a foreigner” kind of attack is vicious. Who is going to hold the copyright for these crafts? A few museums and a few owners of heirloom pieces? There was a question about inclusivity of not just consumer but artists. Well, many a consumer could never have aspired to buy a unique piece, an art that just was not available to all even if they had money before the online happened. I could never have bought an Ashavali or a Ramachandra Pedi if I had not met the master weaver on insta and another master weaver through an online retailer. Forget an Ashavali or Paithani, on the streets of Jaipur I have been humiliated trying to enquire prices of their famed lacquer bangles. I was told “you can’t afford, you won’t buy”. There may be many unscrupulous online retailers. But, look at those dozens of smart ladies who have toiled so much to bring awareness, bring special weaves to women across the globe through Instagram and Facebook in the last year even as we stayed locked inside our homes. Educating and empowering is one thing, but shouting down and preventing someone else’s venture is another. This kind of cancel culture and mob assault on social media is unacceptable. What happened to Sabyasachi may seem harmless in many ways, but it cuts at the liberty of an individual to follow his path. We are a nation of billion and half. We have varied needs and price preferences. No one can dictate one’s preference, either as a consumer or a costume designer. I can only consciously inculcate the desire to appreciate and pay a fair value for our craft. I cannot cancel someone else for not doing what I want done for our artists. Imagine if I were to tell anyone that you should wear only sarees to temples, sarees at least twice or thrice a week compulsorily to keep our textile tradition alive. What uproar would that lead to … We have kept quiet as the elite in this country made saree an “unprofessional” attire, our advertisers and television anchors, all moved to western attire. Do you ever see a protest for saree, for traditional dresses? Smacks of hypocrisy that these same people would think that one business deal would lead to cultural appropriation. Let us play a positive role, bring more platforms for our crafts people, get them a global market, better prices instead of shouting down just one designer.