WHY SILK: The Queen of Fabrics

Silk has been spun, worn and traded for four thousand years, and no fibre invented since has replaced it. Here is why we work in nothing else.

Silk is not manufactured. It is produced by an insect, a single continuous filament that can run close to a kilometre from one cocoon, and every step after that is human: reeling, dyeing, warping, weaving.

That origin is what gives silk its qualities. The filament is triangular in section, so it refracts light from many angles at once, which is why silk glows rather than shines flatly. It is one of the strongest natural fibres by weight. It breathes, it holds dye deeply, and it moves with the body instead of holding a shape against it.

Warm and cool

Silk insulates in winter and releases heat in summer, which is how the same fabric suits a December wedding and an August evening.

Strong enough to inherit

Cared for properly, a silk garment outlives the occasion it was made for. Many Indian families are still wearing silk woven two generations ago.

Colour with depth

Silk takes dye into the fibre rather than onto the surface, so the colour has depth and shifts as the light moves across it.

Drape

It falls rather than stands. A silk skirt moves when you move, which is difficult to imitate in any other fibre.

India is the second largest producer of silk in the world, and the only country that commercially produces all the major varieties. But the more important number is the older one: the number of generations a single weaving family has kept its looms running.

Silk here has never been only a luxury good. It is ritual cloth. It is what a bride wears, what a family gives, what gets folded into a trunk for the daughter who is still a child. Each region developed its own weave, its own motifs, its own way of carrying zari. That regional knowledge is not documented anywhere. It sits in the hands of the people who weave it.

Working in pure silk is our way of keeping those hands employed and that knowledge in use.

Every piece names the silk it is made in. These are the ones you will find across our collections.

Banarasi tissue  Woven in Varanasi with zari carried through the weft, so the cloth itself reads as metallic rather than being embroidered afterwards. Light, luminous, and unmistakable in motion.

Kanchipuram  From Tamil Nadu’s temple town. Dense, weighty, and woven so the border and body are joined by interlocking the warp, a technique that makes the join stronger than the cloth around it.

Bangalore silk  Fine mulberry silk from Karnataka with a smooth, even surface. It tailors beautifully, which is why we cut our structured pieces from it.

Gamthi  A Gujarati silk with more texture and body than a plain weave. It holds embellishment well and gives a garment weight without stiffness.

Habutai  A soft, closely woven silk with a fluid hand and a quiet sheen. Cut for pieces meant to fall close to the body.

Indian silk is usually shown to the world as one garment. That is the part we are trying to change.

The same Banarasi tissue that becomes a saree can become a short gold dress. Bangalore silk, cut on a tailor’s block instead of a drape, becomes a trench coat or an oversized cape. A Gamthi weave holds a suit as well as it holds a lehenga.

Nothing about the weave changes. Only what we do with it. Our silk arrives from the same looms it always has, and then it is cut for the life a woman actually leads: the wedding, yes, and also the dinner, the gallery opening, the boardroom.

Because our silk is woven by hand, no two lengths are identical. A small slub in the thread, a minor irregularity in the weave, a slight shift in sheen or colour along the cloth: these are the record of a person at a loom, and they are not defects.

Pure silk also asks for care. Dry clean only, store it wrapped in muslin rather than plastic, and keep perfume away from the fabric. There is more on caring for your piece in our FAQ.