We need to engage more with communities

Designer Aratrik Dev Varman of the label Tilla has long been a lover of history. One could comfortably call him part-aesthete, part-archeologist, for his clothes dip into vintage styles of the Kutch, Sindh, Balochistan and Afghanistan, bringing alive antique styles and crafts. Tilla, the store and atelier, are situated on a tree-lined avenue in Ahmedabad.

- NAMRATA ZAKARIA

INTERVIEW

Aratrik Dev Varman, Designer

There is also a small, chic cafe in its courtyard that serves the best coffee in town. Tilla repurposes old pieces of textile into festive, celebratory, and high-end garments. Its clothes tell stories of many hands and many histories, using old mirror work, tinsel, or cowrie shell embellishments, just the way Varman intends it to be.

Varman—an alumnus of NID, Ahmedabad, and EnsAD design school, Paris—has lived in Kolkata and Chennai, two cities steeped in tradition and culture. His family hails from Tripura, where he spent his summers growing up. He initiated The Tripura Project a few years ago, in which he collected several pieces of the risha, or a breast cloth worn by Tripuri women woven from an indigenous textile. The project has now turned into a book, The Risha: History in a Narrow Weave, published by Marg (an art book publisher) and released this month. Varman speaks exclusively to THE WEEK about his work and his book:

Q/ Tilla is now 12 years old. Yet it is a relatively small and niche label that functions out of sleepy Ahmedabad.

A/ It is small and niche, because we take time to do things. When one scales up one has to be responsible for the quality one has envisioned. We are a high-end luxury, boutique brand and we like that. That said, we have grown from two tailors to 30. We stay away from techniques that simulate handwork. We believe in handmade luxury and that belief is never going away. We also work with the same set of people, so we have grown as a family.

Q/ What is at the core of Tilla?