Post Sari Shopping

[bethlakshmi]

Ahh... sitting in my bedroom after a lovely day of spending mine, and other people's money. The sari party was not well attended. Not sure what happened, as I had about "I'm comings" and no one actually came. But I was shopping for 3 - me and Tpau and Lady Sprite. So I did a certain amount of damage to Melinda's sari stash all by myself. I blew my own budget a bit, but managed to haggle from my represented customers so that I feel pretty happy about their final totals. Hoping they love their saris as much as I do. It was fun to induge in colors that don't suit my taste or coloring, but that I know will make other people look good. It's like getting to have the coloring you always wish you had. :)


Founda lovely one for me - it's a shot sari that is a festival of texture and color, with an extremely simple pattern. I can't remember the name just now, but it's a sari in a style of an old-time traditional weaver community. The community went bankrupt in the 70s or so and stopped making their signature sari style, as they weren't "fashionable". The weaver's moved out and started to make commerically viable "generi-saris" that suited modern tastes. But a leading sari designer stepped in, and blended the indigenous style with her own wonderfully good taste, and got the artisan's making their traditional style again, but with this enhanced, but complimentary aesthetic. The saris became wildly successful, and are now worth quite a lot of money. They are also gorgeous. It's like fairy fabric - it's gold shot with reds, purples, browns, white, and other golds, to create stripes solids and other patterns. It's got a very little bit of gold zari (metallic thread) in it, but it's hardly the center point, merely a token addition to the lustrousness of the sari. I think it will be a fabulous dance/court sari. Melinda jokes it is an "advanced sari", since the slippery, heavy silk is a challenge to leep in place, and the straight lines necessitate a certain scrupulousness in how to wear it.

I got it for a steal. No, the price would still make people wince, but it's not the most expensive sari I've bought. And it's a good deal less than it would be, due to happenstance of how it got to me. Melinda seemed very happy to have it go to me, because I love saris, know how to drape them well, and delight in the complexities and subtleties of textiles and color. And that we generally like each other - despite our mutually interesting social mannerisms. She clearly wanted this one to go to a "good home". :)

Also bought a few other things -- some nice, red, shoes (I'll get you my pretty!), a bandhani veil, a cotton lungi, and a 9-yard turquoise sari - also a rarity. Getting a 9 yard sari is rare. Getting a bright cotton, fancy checked pattern one - a style new to me, is even more rare, as there seem to be a very few, rare sources for them.

Could go on forever, rhapsodizing on the fun of sharing time occasionally with people who love and study deeply the same wierd thing you do. That the three of us - the hostess, the woman who brought the saris from Portland, OR, to here, and myself - all have compatible, but different approaches to textiles - is very neat. It's neat to not be The Sari Geek, but to be a Sari Compadre for a little while. We are all fighting the good fight -- to make a the world a more textile-rich, Indian-enthusiastic, !! shinier!! place. :)


Crazy Plan #3001: Write a book about the Sisterhood of Saris - a book about my adventures in learning about, and shopping for these lovely ornaments. Getting other people involved, meeting the unique personalities of those who share this love, and all the strange situations one gets into, being a Crazy White Woman who loves India. Hurdle #1: Become a better writers. Me speak OK English. Me could speak better.

Will write about Palio later - also very enjoyable... and busy. Sad to be not the devadasi to His Excellency. Glad to not be holding the competition, and glad to see it go to good hands, who I think will enjoy it as much as I did. ... if I loved it so much... maybe I should try be Court Scholar next year. :)

Good night.

Comments

[safirasilv.livejournal.com]

Ooh... can't wait to see the new saris!
I can tell you what happened to your promised guests: They melted. All my plans for the weekend got changed to lounging around like a boneless cat, drinking cold beverages. (Which was amusing when L and I were attempting to practice our Andalusian dance. Just. Couldn't. Move.)

Question: Is "leep" a technical term for sari-draping or is that a Lakshmi-ism?

sarees and western women

[chio-chan.livejournal.com]

do u often go out in saree? i have a couple of them, shiffon and cotton and i wonder what are the difficulties if u put it on and go out to walk in the street?

because i can put on now only half saree to the dance class:(

and yes, being a Crazy White Woman who loves India is great:)

[sibylla.livejournal.com]

Crazy Plan #3001 reminds me a little bit of the way I felt after I finished reading The Sari, by Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller. A friend of mine gave it to me for Christmas, and it struck me that a sari isn't just a piece of clothing; it's a whole experience. The authors of the book repeatedly call it a "living garment", and they've got a point. I was surprised at just how much in common I have with some of the women in the book regarding the wearing of saris - similar fears and concerns, ideas of beauty and grace. I wrote extensively on it in my paper journal at the time, and might do so in my LJ one of these days. Bah - look at me ramble.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Giggle. It's a symptom of Lakshmi's bad spelling/touchtyping skills when she's writing a post far too late at night. I meant "keep". Generally, cotton is a very obliging fabric - it's like a dog - it desperately wants to be your clothing, and will obligingly do whatever you ask it. It can't help that it's a little puffy and not as shiny as silk.

Silk is like a cat. It's beautiful. It looks graceful, not matter what its doing. But it really has it's own sense of where it would like to be, and often it believes it would not like to be on your body (you mere mortal, you). It would rather be sliding off you, taking it's own little journey elsewhere, to see something more interesting than you. This is clearly a problem when it was supposed to be your clothing for the day. :)

Re: sarees and western women

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Well... my dance class is pretty liberal. My teacher is very strict and serious about good dance technique and thorough understanding of movement, but we don't have the ritual clothing assignments that I see in other classes. By "half-sari" do you mean a sari that is a narrower width than your typical saris? I've seen them in another very traditional class. We don't use them - we fold the edges of a fancy sari for performances, to hike it up out of stomping range. For class, we all dance in a variety of slummy dance gear - it's clean, it doesn't get in the way of movement, but it ain't pretty. We all usually throw a wrapped veil/sash over the shoulder and around the waist, so the teacher can see our waists.

I do something called the "SCA" - Society for Creative Anachronism - as well. We celebrate and recreate medieval culture. The group is predominately European - between the Fall of Rome and 1600 - but they accept weirdos from other cultures, as well, and I focus on medieval India. In that organization, I wear a sari so much it feels like clothes, but I wear a medieval style fishtail wrap, not a nivi wrap like you see on modern Indian ladies. Once and while - for a friend's party, or for a India-related thing - I will wear a full, floor-length nivi style wrap.

I don't tend to wear them out and about on most regular days. Partly because I wear them elsewhere. Partly because I like my casual American clothes, too. And partly because I work 40 hours a week, and if I'm not working, I'm either dancing in dance-appropos clothing, or doing something messy and grungy, like fixing my house. ;)

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Hmm... will have to read. I wish I could do it now... and attribute it to Chantal Boulanger, who passed on in February. It would be such a good commemoration to her. I know when she wrote "Draping Saris: Revealing Lives", she meant revealing the lives of the Indian women who wear saris. But I think that saris have become part of a different sort of life - that of a modern day Western woman who has a very different lifestyle from an Indian norm, but who embraces the uniqueness and beauty of saris as a way to combat the sometimes-ugliness of the high-tech world that she is a part of.

[sibylla.livejournal.com]

I think that you're absolutely right. I would dearly love to read a book on such a topic. There's just something about wearing saris that I don't get from any other type of garment. The very wearing of a sari puts one in a different mindset, makes one more aware of one's self and one's body in a way that nothing else quite does.

[safirasilv.livejournal.com]

ROTFL

Re: sarees and western women

[chio-chan.livejournal.com]

our teacher is not very strict abt sarees too, but for me it is a part of magic (in fact in this hot summer weather im the only crazy in our studio wearing saree:)) - just because i feel the movements better. the back is straight because saree holds it, the pleats a heavy and keep your araimandi nice. i like it. saree is the clothes for dancing. it is a pity that we have special costumes imitatin saree for the perfomance not sarees:(
btw, i liked your fishtail style a lot, i saw it on your site and tried to wear saree in class like this last summer. but the ppl who visited india said - what a dhoti is it??? so i dont wear it now:)

thanks for the great explanation of the styles of wrapping!