A Textile Tribute

An insight into an emotional and thought-provoking collaboration between Harper’s Bazaar and Godrej India Culture Lab Photographs 

- Aneev Rao

THIS AUGUST MARKED 70 YEARS SINCE THE PARTITION—the cataclysmic event that sliced India to create Pakistan, displacing millions. Early that month, Remembering Partition: Museum of Memories, a three-day pop-up museum hosted by Godrej India Culture Lab at their campus in Vikhroli, Mumbai, brought together stories, objects, and conversations about the largest mass migration in human history. Bazaar was invited to bring fashion into the dialogue and the result was a poignant exhibition titled Stitching History. We asked seven of our favourite designers to meditate on this difficult, defining period in Indian history. These garments will now be a part of the permanent display at the Partition Museum in Amritsar.

ABRAHAM & THAKORE

A SIGNATURE ABRAHAM & THAKORE CREATION pays homage to traditional Indian fabrics like raw silk, khadi, and muslin. With their minimal aesthetic and love of exquisite craftsmanship, the duo have taken Indian textiles and design across the world. Staying true to their style, the piece they created for Stitching History was deceptively simple—a length of fairly coarse, hand-spun khadi, typically worn by Punjabi women of that time. The piece is distressed: Fabric tears convey a sense of displacement, where violence is seen as a dominant form of the expression of power. Dyed in ivory, crimson, and black, the sari is dotted with kantha by unsecured strands to illustrate the loss of control and honour. “It’s not explicit or pictorial,” says David Abraham. “It’s more of an abstract representation of the suffering experienced by women fleeing the horrors of the Partition.” 

JJ VALAYA