Manifesto

Textiles represent the most intimate of aesthetic experiences. They kindle pleasure through touch, and shapeshift to create new meaning with every interaction. Their ornaments can communicate ceremony and dissent, passion and renunciation, even fertility and death. They intertwine with every fiber of civilization, ornamenting abodes, framing bodies and revealing metaphysical possibilities. They evidence cultural transitions and forgotten societal norms, as they do people's personal tastes. They are unbridled manifestations of the human psyche.

For centuries, they have attracted visitors to South Asian shores, who have in turn have compounded the prowess and vocabulary of the subcontinent's textile-makers. These cumulative traditions have filled regional treasuries and have facilitated the formation of empires. Their production has shaped our environments and their use, our daily lives.

We look to textiles to create our future while using the past so that we may relate it to our present. Our practice is informed by rigorous and multifaceted enquiries, honing our own capacities like a weaver on their loom towards expanding the purview of textile cultures.

Of all the unstitched garments in India, the saree alone has popularly persisted into the 21st century. It represents the purest and most primal way of interacting with textiles: the drape. It can communicate austerity and excess. It is a shield against forgetfulness. It is grace reified.

The saree is our compass. We are The Registry of Sarees.