Ankade

Aankade is a contemporary women's wear collection created by developing hand-woven fabric with Silk and Banana yarns. The surface of the fabric is hand painted and dyed with natural colours using Ajrakh craft techniques.

Concept

The concept behind the print development was to use real-life smartphone usage data from people and convert it into an interesting graphical representation.

Theme

The idea behind the theme aankade is to create awareness regarding smartphone usage. There was a sharp rise in the usage of smartphones during the COVID period, and it made smartphones a necessary companion to deal with all sorts of situations. Things slowly went back to normal, but smartphone usage habits remained, and smartphone still consumes lots of time. Being mindful we can convert this overuse of phones into something useful like talking to our parents or our kids, planting a tree, or doing anything which can bring change in our lives.

Fabric Development

The fabric is developed on handloom using Banana yarn in the weft and Silk in the warp. Plain, twill, and zig-zag twill weave were three weave variations woven. It resulted in interesting fabric fall, shine, and dye intake.

Print Development

Hand-woven banana silk fabric was processed through several stages of Ajrakh's craft to create prints and dying of fabric. All the graphical representations were hand painted with natural colours and resists of Ajrakh.

Apparel Design

This collection consists of contemporary silhouettes and print designs. It targets customers of the present generation. It consists of handwoven fabric with novel yarns and innovating the ajrakh craft with new designs yet using old traditional techniques. It spreads awareness towards slow fashion and sustainability and also helps in supporting craft communities.