INNOVATION OVER INTERVENTION

In a conversation with Brinda Gill, Iti Tyagi stresses on the importance of empowering craftspeople by creating alternative, innovative models, and providing them with the space to create in ways that they know best.

- Brinda Gill

Iti Tyagi, an alumna of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and KLC School of Design, London, is the founder of Crafts Village, New Delhi. Craft Village is a social organisation that works towards the training and promotion of the crafts and craftspeople of India. A recipient of the Nari Shakti Puraskar conferred by the Government of India, she is indeed a force to be reckoned with. In the conversation below, she talks about her spearheading work in the crafts sector, the country’s artisans, nuances of design intervention, as well as the future of India’s apparel.

WHAT IS THE TRAJECTORY THAT INDIA’S HANDLOOMS HAVE BEEN TAKING?

Indian textiles have played a pivotal role in domestic and international markets, and the handloom has certainly had its era. But today, power looms increasingly dominate the sector. We have lost a huge portion of textile production to Bangladesh and China, due to which handloom clusters have been struggling. We forget that China and Bangladesh may be able to eat significantly into the power-loom business, but they would never be able to compete with the handloom sector as it requires lineage, legacy, and an inherent know-how.

The reason why more preference is given to machine-made products is that handmade items are expensive as well as timeconsuming. 1990, all the way into 2010, has been a golden yet difficult phase for textiles as there have been huge shifts—the phasing-out of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA), which created immense pressure on pricing and production; the emergence of fast fashion; and online channels that have sped things up. Handmade fashion, however, does not function like that. It needs time and effort. So the handloom went from an exciting to a disappointing phase during these two decades.