All Sarees

Rani pink and bottle green — the contrast South-Indian weavers keep coming back to, because it simply works.The body is deep rani pink silk, smooth and light-catching, with small gold...

Magenta is a colour that does not wait to be noticed. The body is woven in it — a warm, saturated magenta silk carrying gold mango buti in rows, the...

This is the pink-and-purple that South-Indian weavers have never stopped making, because it never stops working.The body is rani pink silk with round gold coin buti set in neat rows...

Black is the colour people reach for when they want to be sure. Here it is woven in clean silk, plain across the body until it nears the border, where...

Some greens are quiet. This one is not.The body is a deep peacock teal, held in soft silk, with small gold buti scattered across it in even rows. It is...

Coral, and the gold that goes with it. The body is organza — light, faintly sheer, carrying rows of gold flower butas that sit up off the surface. The border...

Elephants, deer and lions, walking in columns down the body in silver and gold. This is the old Kanchipuram vocabulary — animals in procession, the way they appear on temple...

Peach is a difficult colour to get right. Too warm and it turns orange; too pale and it disappears. This one lands where it should. Sheer organza, dotted with gold...

Violet is the colour most women skip past and then think about later. This one is silk cotton — the weave that drapes like silk and wears like cotton, which...

Three colours, and each one earns its place. The body is red, filled with gold peacock roundels — birds in profile, tails fanned, set inside circles that repeat across the...

Rose pink, and then a red border that refuses to sit quietly beside it. The body is smooth pink silk with a row of gold leaf motifs standing along the...

Sea green and purple is a combination the Kanchipuram weavers have trusted for generations, and once you see it on the shoulder you understand why. Neither colour concedes. The body...

The trees are the whole point. A row of them walks along the lower body of this saree in gold zari — full-crowned, symmetrical, the kind of motif that has...

Blush pink organza, sheer enough to catch the afternoon and light enough that you forget you are wearing six yards. Gold butas sit in rows down the body, small and...

There is a particular pink that does not ask permission. This one arrives in raw tussar silk, and it holds the light the way only tussar does — a little...