On any given day in Mylapore, Chennai’s love affair with Madras checks is in plain sight. A woman in a vibrant checked cotton sari stops to buy malli poo, an uncle strolls past in a lungi patterned with intersecting shades of blue and green, and a shopkeeper sports a shirt whose squares are a kaleidoscope of red, yellow and green. The combinations vary, the colours compete for attention and the effect is effortlessly stylish. Madras checks are practically part of the city’s dress code.
Yet the textile bearing the city’s name has traversed far beyond it. Exported along historic maritime trade routes, Madras checks found new meanings in West African and Caribbean dress before becoming a fixture of American preppy style in the mid-20th century.
For Indulge’s 19th anniversary, as we celebrate 19 things we love about Chennai, Madras checks are one textile worth looking at afresh. They embody the city’s chromatic exuberance and its ability to make the familiar feel fashionable across generations. We speak to contemporary designers and textile researchers to explore how this iconic pattern is being reinterpreted for clothing, accessories, interiors and more.
“Today, when we say Madras checks, we broadly refer to any large, multicoloured checks in cotton. But this is a relatively recent usage,” says Sreemathy Mohan, textile researcher and founder of Sthree Creatives. “Checks, or ‘kattam’ as we call them in Tamil, have been part of our textile tradition for centuries. They were woven using coloured yarns in the warp and weft, and were used in handkerchiefs, lungis, ritual textiles and other fabrics,” she explains.
As Madras became a major centre for the export of cotton textiles, its checked fabrics travelled to markets across the world. One form that gained prominence was the Real Madras Handkerchief (RMHK), a handwoven cotton cloth exported in lengths that could be cut into square kerchiefs or worn as wraps. The name reflected the fabric’s association with Madras, while the prefix ‘Real’ helped distinguish the original Indian handwoven cloth from imitations manufactured for overseas markets. Over time, Madras checks became the broader name for the colourful checked textile.
“The Real Madras Handkerchief was traditionally woven in plain weave, using 60s cotton in the warp and 40s in the weft. These numbers refer to the yarn count, which indicates the fineness of the cotton yarn. A higher count, such as 60s, denotes a finer yarn than 40s. The fabric was woven in eight-yard lengths, divided into squares of approximately 36 inches,” Sreemathy explains.
The textile’s evolution was shaped by the people who wore it. As Sreemathy observes, “The colours, checks and borders changed according to customer preferences.” Weavers introduced more elaborate variations, including jacquard borders, additional motifs and embroidery.
In West Africa, the imported cloth was incorporated into local sartorial practices and acquired new cultural meanings. Among the Kalabari, it became known as injiri, while the Igbo called it George cloth. In the Caribbean, Madras cloth also became associated with traditional dress. The fabric’s journey is therefore as much about the people who gave it new meanings as it is about the merchants who transported it.
Prasan Shah, founder of Original Madras Trading Company, has a family connection to this international trade. His family’s business began producing Madras check shirts for the American market in the 1970s, when the fabric already had a foothold in overseas wardrobes.
“In the past, what happened was Madras checks became a very western fabric. It became this very ‘Ivy’ and preppy fabric. So there was a complete disconnect between the designers in the West that were designing it and the weavers here in India that were weaving it,” he explains.
The irony is difficult to ignore, a textile bearing the city’s name became an internationally recognisable fashion reference, while the handloom ecosystem associated with its production dwindled. Prasan recalls that when his family’s business began more than 50 years ago, hundreds of families in Madras were weaving handloom Madras. Today, he says, finding weavers who continue the practice is far harder.
“We started with two weavers. And today we are supporting more than 50 weavers consistently through the success of the brand,” he smiles, describing the work of rebuilding a production network.
A renewed interest in checks has created fresh possibilities for the textile. S Shankar Kumaraswamy, director of Chennai textile house RmKV, sees the pattern as an enduring part of the region’s design vocabulary. “For us at RmKV, I think the Madras check is an intrinsic part of Tamil Nadu culture and design language. So we try to feature it as much as possible in our designs,” he says. “Our Deepavali collection from this year incorporates Madras checks with a nice pop of colour,” he reveals. “We play with a light blue colour palette and the lighter shade makes it more contemporary,” he tells us.
For designer Vivek Karunakaran, the check’s simplicity is what makes it so open to reinterpretation. “For me, the beauty of the Madras check lies in its simplicity. It’s essentially just lines and intersections, but the way those lines and the distinctive colours come together creates rhythm, movement and character,” he enthuses.
His experiments move beyond the conventional checked surface. “I’ve always been fascinated about the idea of taking something familiar and making you look at it differently. Working with Madras checks, I didn’t want the check to simply sit on the surface of the garment as a printed or woven pattern. I wanted to explore what happens when the idea of the check becomes part of the construction of the garment,” he says.
Vivek also plays with proportion and placement. “I have also enjoyed juxtaposing it with quieter, solid colours and luxurious fabrics like silk, raw silk or textured cottons,” he shares. A small panel, pocket, sleeve or inset can give the eye a glimpse of the pattern without overwhelming the silhouette. “I think for today’s wearer, it is all about giving the eye something familiar but presenting it in an unexpected proportion, scale or context,” he notes.
Designer Vino Supraja similarly sees the loom as the beginning of a larger creative vocabulary. “As a designer, the construction of Madras checks fascinates me. I often wonder how the weavers visualised the colour combinations, decided on stripe widths and anticipated the patterns that would emerge when the warp and weft intersected, long before computers existed,” she muses.
She believes that the design possibilities begin well before a garment reaches the cutting table. “The beauty of Madras checks is that the design possibilities begin at the loom and continue through pattern cutting, draping and construction. There is so much creative freedom within what appears to be a simple grid,” she tells us.
A more recent reinterpretation arrived with Rahul Mishra’s AFEW Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Fresh. Madras checks appeared in corset tops, hoodies with corset seams and balloon skirts, with embroidered dragonflies and other embellishments adding further detail. The collection recast a familiar cotton textile in silhouettes associated with contemporary ready-to-wear, demonstrating how its checked grid can be integral to a garment’s construction and character rather than simply a surface pattern.
For Purushu Arie, the possibilities of Madras checks extend beyond the familiar grid. The Chennai-based designer has built his eponymous label around Tamil street style, reworking everyday garments such as the lungi and veshti through ungendered silhouettes, functional detailing and a streetwear sensibility.
“Initially, when I was wearing Madras checks in the form of lungis, I realised that they didn’t have pockets for me to keep my phone, wallet, keys and so on. They were also constantly prone to slipping. So, from 2014, I was innovating different kinds of waistband veshtis and lungis. One of my first innovations was the elastic-waistband lungi that I made in my college days at NIFT Delhi,” he recalls.
While travelling to Tiruppur for work, a sign in its corridor changed how he thought about the garment he had been reinterpreting. “The hotel had a signboard which said, ‘Do not wear lungis to avoid indecency to the guests.’ So that was a big trigger for me,” he tells us.
Purushu’s work makes the politics of the checked textile tangible. Madras checks had travelled internationally as a desirable fabric, acquiring associations with leisure and luxury, while garments made from the same visual vocabulary could be devalued at home because of their association with working-class life. His response has been to put those everyday forms at the centre of his design practice.
“I think Madras checks were exported extensively as a luxury textile. They were supposed to be a symbol of luxury because they were lightweight, comfortable and had their own character. But they were never really given the same due or credit within our own culture because they were adopted by the masses,” he explains.
He sees a shift in the growing acceptance of styles that originate outside elite fashion circles. “Today, we are accepting trends that come from the people, from the masses. That is how hip-hop was. It did not come from elite society. It was born among the masses and then reached upwards. That is how I see Madras textiles. They are everywhere on Chennai’s streets. It is the OG identity of Chennai. It is a very important identity within the city’s sartorial culture, and finally, very slowly and steadily, people have started acknowledging it,” he smiles.
The fabric’s contemporary life is also expanding beyond clothing. Woodpecker Furniture’s Madras Unfolded collection brings checks into upholstered furniture. Keerthana Swaminathan, the company’s head of marketing, says the collection pairs the familiar textile with contemporary furni-ture forms. “The checks add colour, character and a sense of familiarity, creating a warm, homely feel while giving the pattern a new context in interior design,” she says. The move into interiors gives Madras checks a different presence in daily life.
For all the ways Madras checks have been adapted internationally, their strongest claim to Chennai remains their everyday presence. Shankar sees the pattern as part of Tamil Nadu’s design language, appearing in different forms across clothing and objects. Even the koodai bags carried through markets and neighbourhoods can feature the familiar interplay of colours, he notes.
For Sreemathy, documentation and collaboration are equally important. She points to the knowledge held by master weavers, dyers and people who worked in the export trade, much of which was never formally recorded. “There was an entire system of design, technical knowledge, skilled labour and trade behind them,” she says of older textiles. “We often speak about reviving old designs, but unless we document and understand the processes and the people involved, we are preserving only a small part of that history,” she points out.
As Indulge Chennai celebrates another year, Madras checks make a fitting addition to the list of things we love about the city. The grid may have travelled far, but in Chennai, people have never needed reminding of its appeal. If Chennai had a signature pattern, it would be Madras checks: bright, breathable, irrepressibly versatile!
Email: anoushkakundu@newindianexpress.com
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