Indian Embroidery!
Why Indian and Pakistani bridal dresses are almost the same?
Inspiration of patterns
For this project, I have looked for Indian embroidery archive collection from Whitworth art gallery, Manchester art gallery and MMU special collection. I started off making different patterns without following any specific colour theme, but my key inspiration was the patterns from India because for this project I wanted to explore traditional Indian patterns.
My visual research for Indian embroidery has described me the different uses of animal and flowery patterns on Indian archive collections.
I did different drawings by getting inspired by my secondary and primary research, which has allowed me to develop my drawing skills by using a variety of materials. There are some examples of my sketchbook work down below:
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| My work from the sketchbook |
As India and Pakistan used to be one country before 1947, therefore, India and Pakistan are still a subcultural continent. There are Muslims who believed that making motifs of living things is forbidden in Islam and their architectural and textile designs were inspired by geometry patterns, but at the other hand, there were Hindus who mostly made motifs by getting inspiration from nature. However, two completely different beliefs of a culture are living on the same continent and as the modern era came along, these two started to adopt one another living-styles and started to mix up with each other.
"While people from central Asia brought a range of textile designs and modes of the dress with them..." (Berg encyclopedia of world dress and fashion by Jasleen dhammiya, pg:61)
The reason, to put this quote is to explain that during the separation of India and Pakistan, most migrants have brought their clothes and accessories from India, which means Pakistanis and Indian cultural values and textile work is almost the same.
Keeping all these details in mind, I visited south Asian wedding dresses shops in the Wilmslow road, where I have found some exquisite wedding dresses, with a lot of embellished, printed and embroidered wedding gowns. My visit to these shops was not much beneficial because all of these shops make their dresses from India or Pakistan because of the lack of workers who got trained accordingly to the culture. Also, having this kind of embellishers is expensive in the U.K. So 9 in 10 shops do have factories and a wide range of workers in India and Pakistan, that is why the shopkeepers do not have enough information about the patterns and colours.
In my drawings, I have tried to collaborate mostly with the nature-inspired patterns more than geometrical. This is because I like more ethnic and nature-inspired designs than geometrical.
Moreover, throughout my visual research, I have noticed that the patterns are not clearly representing nature, but they are made in a sense which shows the movement of a plant and the smoothness of a soul - which gives a drama to a pattern.
Bridal dress colours
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| Bridal dress from India |
Why red and gold?
In most South Asian countries, red is still considered as a symbol of happiness and expansion to a new life of a woman and is considered auspicious and good fortune. That is why, for centuries, red has been the colour of marriage in South Asian countries.
In addition, gold has been considered as the sunshine. It indicates the purity of sunlight into one's life.
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| Goggled photograph, but some colour swatches are added by me. |
Why I don't want to choose red and golden as my colour pallet?
The reason I don't want to work with red and golden colours is that now the tradition and the values have been developed in both countries(India and Pakistan). South Asians are changing their minds for a bridal dress. there are so many varieties that one can easily approach whatever they want to. People are going for lighter colour pallets especially rose pastel colours
According to my point of view, I think people in South Asia are more attracted to western culture. I feel like western culture is going towards colours rather than having traditional white bridal dresses, and South Asians have started to go for a lighter colour pallet, which means we can break the rules of these traditions unless it doesn't harm anyone.
However. my colour pallet for this project is shown in the picture on the left side. I think my colour pallet is neither too bright nor too light. it is peaceful but with a little drama, but still, I think it's too pink and I should play with contrasting colours more.
Mostly, I think for this project I am more interested in the colour and pattern inspiration of South Asian embroidery work onto a bridal dress.
