Silk saree with ipod and speakers built in the border – swaramadhuri
‘Swaramadhuri’, a ‘singing’ silk saree embedded with eight micro-speakers on its border, has caught the fancy of many traders down south. Conceptualised by P Mohan, a small-scale designer of Dharmavaram town in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantpur district, the saree has a small iPod at the pallu, which can play as many as 200 songs continuously for four hours.
A 2-GB memory chip is used to support the iPod on the saree. Mohan toiled for two months to come out with this unique design and now the unusual piece has generated a lot of interest and curiosity among silk traders in South India.
B Datta Shiva, the entrepreneur who has purchased the rights of the saree, said “orders are pouring in from showrooms in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh for the supply of the attire.” “It took nearly a month to make one saree. Ten members of our unit continuously worked and finished it,” Shiva said.
The same designer had earlier created sarees with small LED bulbs which he calls the ‘lighting saree’. He had also made silk sarees using sandalwood.
“There is a great demand for the sandalwood saree. We get orders from all over the south. But due to time consuming process, we are not able to meet the demand,” Shiva said. For the saree, Mohan claims he uses pure sandalwood purchased from a Karnataka government-owned emporium.
Source Hindustan Times
Artistic Saree Photo
I love artistic saree photography such as this one. This shot is seductive, kind of eerie, and overall captivating. The setting and the model juxtapose each other and the clusters of light bulbs, well I don’t know what to make of them but I like the over all appeal of the photo.
Photo from dsigner_x.
Wordless Wednesday : Saree Sculpture
Its Wednesday, lets make the saree do the talking!
Indian Contemporary Art
Till about last year, the Indian art scene was RED HOT. The prices reached heights never seen before. But then came the credit crisis and it dried up almost immediately. The last auction that I was keeping track of did not sell more than half of the offering.
This is an interesting piece that was shown at the India Art Summit.
Remembering the half saree
Usha Vaidyanathan at her blog Agelessbonding wrote about her memories of half sarees as she was growing up.
She connected it with the some some gruesome practice of breast ironing in Africa, unfortunately I am too squeamish to read that far.
On the other hand, Kenny Wordsmith from Chennai wrote a nice story called The Dream of an Actress.
And I have a dream my fans are not aware of: A dhavani dream. I fancy myself in a dhavani or half-saree. I wished, with all my heart, that an open-minded director would approach me for a dhavani-wearing role. Whenever I see a girl wearing one, a pang of nostalgia brings back memories of my village, my first love, temple bells, early-morning kolams and the smell of sambrani. Can’t put it accurately in words, but I promise you one thing. Give me a village girl’s role; Allow me to wear a green blouse, green skirt and a magenta half-saree; I will give you an award-winning performance. And it is not just sentiment; I have the figure for a dhavani. I have more flesh at the right places than, say, Miss Universe.
I have written about Dhavani (also referred to as thaavani – half saree) several times before. I like it only if it is draped by an age appropriate person.
Here is Anushka in a half saee, crossing the age limit by just a bit.
Dave and Jenny’s Delhi Struggle
Dave and Jenny are two NewYorkers who moved to Delhi. They have a delightful blog at Our Delhi Struggle.
I was born in Delhi and the city holds a great deal of nostalgia for me. Their posts are very authentic, not white washed like the tourist blogs are and not oblivious to the incongruity of life in Delhi, as many of the local blogs are.
When they talk about the bright green slime at Hauz Khas reservoir, I get transported back there. I do have a distinct and clear memory of glowing neon green pools of water.
Why is this in a saree blog? Because recently they had a bollywood movie poster made of themselves. They captured their likeness in archaic Bollywood style, as you can see below.
The iconic saree, with incorrect pleats is present as ever!
Nandana Sen : rang rasiya’s colorful saree art
Very artistic picture of melding colors. Nandana Sen (daughter of the famous Amartya Sen but you don`t need an economist to tell that her career graph is soaring at the moment).
Via Sify.com
About US
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.”
Rupa Gupta: A writer, editor and journalist, Rupa has been in the media for more than two decades. She has worked as Editor with major publications, both in India and abroad. a keen eye for fashion and current trends. Her sense of aesthetics transcends the hype and always finds the true beauty.
Liza Varma is a former Femina Miss India and well known model in Delhi. Today, she is a leading Fashion Choreographer with over 1000 shows to her credit in India and abroad. She is also a member of the Fashion Design Council of India and a Consultant with Shoot Talent Management. Her client list is the who’s who of Indian fashion industry.
Misty is a student in London and has her fingers on the pulse of London fashion industry.
Abhi is a student in San Francisco and showcases sensuous saree pictures.
Kamini is a model in Los Angeles and loves to accentuate the best a saree has to offer.