Celebrating Weaves With Vidhi Singhania

Hello! Meets the designer and textile exponent at home in delhi with her daughters-in-law, sonam and sana singhania. Now working together for brand vidhi singhania, the trio is setting an example of how creative traditions can be preserved and propagated from one generation to the other.

- Sanghita Singh

Vidhi Singhania believes in destiny. After all, it’s not often that one arrives at a place and makes it their karmic destination. In 1995, when Vidhi started living in Kota with her industrialist husband, Nidhipati Singhania (whose business interests took him to Rajasthan’s erstwhile royal kingdom and the hub for the famous handwoven Kota sarees), she discovered a mine of opportunity while trying to help local craftsmen. Trying to dissuade the craftsmen who wanted to give up their traditional occupation in favour of factory jobs, she started working with them and designed sarees with a twist from the original. Now in the business as the doyenne of traditional weave revivalism, Vidhi looks back at her journey with a sense of belief and faith in life’s serendipitous encounters. “I totally believe that my destiny took me to Kota. When I saw the stuff that the weavers brought to me, it set me thinking about why they were looking for an alternative means of earning a livelihood. I realised it wasn’t lucrative enough for them,” she recollects her tryst with weavers. Vidhi started giving the weavers new ideas about making those sarees more attractive for clients by introducing to them various possibilities of weaving and designing the original Kota saree.