Gaurang’s Chitravali

Textile Designer Gaurang will present ‘Chitravali – (painted panoramas) an anthology of 40 handcrafted ensembles, inspired by 30 frescos from caves of Ajanta at the Lakme Fashion Week on August 18.

According to Gaurang ‘Chitravali' brings the grandiose ancient Indian Art alive on textiles using hand-painted kalamkari and gives it an enthralling festive gaze. It also introduces to the fashion world a range of unseen textile innovation.

Every aspect of this collection will carry a strong and diverse colour personality, He says. The characters are bold and multi-coloured but are never repeated. The Kalamkari paintings were created using natural dyes and involved 17 tedious steps to process, while a lone master painter replicated the frescos of the caves.

One of the highlights of his inspiration Gaurang says is a unique collection of Kanjeevaram silk that is synonymous with celebratory wear, where bright colours are subdued in the natural dyes, yet maintains the richness with archaic temple tales using the korvai weaving technique.

"There is also a starry effect to every ‘Chitravali' Character," adds Gaurang". We have created a beautiful jugalbandi of textiles—kalamkari and Kanjeevaram accentuated with chikankari on tussar and mukaish embroidery from Uttar Pradesh giving it a scintillating effect.

The splash of colour in the collection is predominated by natural dyes extracted from the bark, flower and root ofplants. While the kasaya red is derived from madder and pomegranate seeds, earthen yellow is from haldi, black was achieved by mixing iron and jaggery, moss green by mixing indigo and myrobalan. All these were blended to produce innumerable shades in Kalamkari and in Kanjeevaram.

A performance of Hindustani classical music by Shubha Mudgal will transport the audience to the beauty of the paintings at Ajanta caves and a journey of heritage which she has composed especially for the ‘Chitravali' collection.