Ancient art at London Fashion Week

Hyderabad-based young designer Jayshree Patel creates ripples in fashion circuit with her designs. She recently showcased her collection ‘Tree of Life' at London Fashion Week. She says, “‘Tree of Life’ is all about culture, which explains unity in oneness and ‘Tree of Life’ is mentioned in every holy book that depicts life.”  

She also used the ancient technique ‘Rogan art’ for her collection. She elaborates, “I have presented ‘Rogan Art’ at London. ‘Rogan Art’, an ancient skill with its origins in Persia, came down to Kutch around 400 years ago. 

Traditionally, the craft was pursued to beautify bridal clothing of the regional tribes, beautiful borders and floral patterns on Ghagras, odhni and bed spreads were painstakingly painted. However, I did Rogan embroidery on my clothes.”

“While travelling I stopped at Kutch in Gujarat, which is also my native place, to see the art form and observed it. I have taken the 400-year-old art as inspiration. This rare craft is practiced by a lone Muslim family in India, the Khatris, who call the sleepy hamlet of Nirona in Gujarat’s Kutch district their home. 

This family of traditional artists has steadfastly kept this intriguing craft alive for over three centuries, protecting it from vanishing into the folds of history. I recreated ‘Rogan Art’ by converting it into machine embroidery. This art form on the fabric gives an embellished look, yet very smooth to touch,” says Jayshree.

 About the challenge in converting the art form into embroidery she says, “‘Rogan Art’ is very good. They use cotton cloth and they have only five natural colours or pigments - white, yellow, red, blue and orange.  They take the colour and use it on the cloth. They taken an iron rod and move it gently on the cloth which is like a free hand painting. They use castor oil which is made and cooled for sometime as it gives the right colour to the cloth. This is about the painting and I had to convert it into embroidery as I was lacking in time. I had only two months to create the whole collection, which was very difficult for me.”

Jayshree Patel, while studying Fashion Designing at INIFD Himayatnagar, in Hyderabad, wanted use all her fashion designing knowledge practically. She is just a second year student. But, that still didn’t stop her. “It took me eight months to create my collection. I was the only one selected out of 50 to 60 from Hyderabad,” shares Jayshree.