Jun 30 2012
Very Different Vintage Sunday Sarees on a Saturday
Taken through glass at an exhibit and not a good copy, here is the earliest photograph I’ve found of one of my favourites, Maharani Vani Vilasa of Mysore: mother of the five adorable children I blogged about for the past two weeks, and whose Maharaja husband died young, making her Regent to their son. As a pretty girl in the late 1870s (married at age 12), she wears Mysore’s characteristic front-trained saree in a light woven check with silk and/or zari borders and pallu, the end around her upper right arm like a sleeve. She retained her sweet expression over the following 50+ years.
This carefully selected and posed woman graced a postcard advertising Indian tea. Not exactly ”tribal” in the sense of a remote indigenous culture, but different from town or city styles, her saree is clearly a holdover from simpler days. Contrasting borders, well draped, add an aesthetic design element worthy of a Paris fashion house of any era. The body of the saree appears slightly variegated, suggesting even in black-and-white the soft hues of natural dyes and hand-woven cloth of homespun thread.
Sunny is a designer in Los Angeles. He loves the fluidity and fluency of a saree and believes that when a woman wears a saree, she not only adorns her body but she also adorns her soul. His design ethos is that “simplicity never goes out of style.”
Indrani is a video 
Jul 04, 2012 @ 19:37:21
So THIS
Jul 04, 2012 @ 19:50:49
Whoops, my Internet connection went glitchy again….
So THIS is the Maharani! Such a lovely young girl.
Well, child really. But she looks so serene and poised, well beyond her years. I sorta understand how she probably dealt with all the sadness that would envelope her later in her life. There’s a nice almost stoic dignity about her. Also, most of her kids seem to have many of her facial features. Very nice.
As for the tea harvester, this is one cool image. The details are vivid. I can almost feel the texture of the fabrics!
I really enjoy these types of photos of daily life. And, oddly enough, it probably depicts a way of life that has not changed for literally a couple of centuries! A similar scene could still be found in a contemporary Bharat today. Neat.