Lustrous Linen Silk Sarees – The Trendy Corporate Collections

Around mid-2017, Nandita Das was a picture of grace at Cannes Film Festival where she was representing her film Manto, sporting an elegant peach-zari linen sari by Anavila Mishra, country’s leading fashion designer. A forerunner of the linen sari movement, her saris have been sported by celebrities including Sonam Kapoor, Vidya Balan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu and each time, stand out for their elegance.

Linen saris are making a statement, emerging as an alternative to six yards of silk and cotton. Saris that had sheen, a good fall and don’t feel heavy, linen silk sarees make a good choice for women who want to dress for an occasion and don’t want to restrict themselves to silk.

National Institute of Fashion Design student and founder of Kolkata based Karomi, Sarita Ganeriwalais fascinated by the possibilities with linen on the loom. “Linen is breathable but has the tendency to be stiff. When linen is combined with hand-spun cotton like khadi, the garment is softer. Similarly, using silk with linen gives the sheen to the sari,” she says.

A lot of research and development goes into weaving linen saris. Finer yarns with counts ranging from 80 to 100 are preferred for weaving linen sarees and the loom is set such that the weaving is a little loose because a tight weave makes the sari heavy and the saree gets crumpled easily. Also, lot of other factors has to be taken into account like whether to use basket weave or plain weave? Whether it has to be a warp based or weft-based sari? Which yarn do we use?Etc..

Qualities of Linen like the ease with which it takes to natural dyes and that it is breathable and has a distinct texture makes it an exciting rape for both weavers and buyers. With linen saris beginning to woo the spotlight, many traditional sari houses and online handloom retailers like Shatika have also begun exploring that space. “Linen is wearable throughout the year in Indian conditions and it’s encouraging when buyers tell us that they receive a number of compliments when they sport our linen saris.” Says a sari house owner cheerfully.

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