Rema Kumar brings handwoven saris and textile restoration to Chennai

For nearly 25 years, Delhi-based textile designer Rema Kumar has worked closely with weavers and master craftsmen across India, building a practice rooted in respect, curiosity, and quiet innovation. Known for her instinctive use of colour and her ability to breathe contemporary life into age-old techniques, Rema has consistently encouraged artisans to think beyond the familiar—without losing the soul of the craft. As she brings her latest collections to Chennai, the designer opens up not only about new saris, but also about a restoration practice that has become deeply personal.

Rema Kumar on colour, texture, and contemporary craft

The starting point for her Chennai showcase lies in Rema’s ongoing exploration of colour, surface, and process. This time, she presents Nirangal silk saris from the Woven Fables series and Dabu printed saris from Printed Narratives, alongside her Maheshwaris, Chanderis, and Uttara Cottons. Shown in Chennai for the first time, the two new collections feel like a natural extension of her long-standing practice.

The Nirangal saris, handwoven in Champa, Chhattisgarh, are an ode to colour—Rema’s constant driving force. Subtle shifts in hue, tonal layering, and the rhythm of the weave come together to create saris that are visually restrained yet deeply expressive. In contrast, the Dabu printed saris mark her first foray into resist printing, born from a long-standing love for geometry and natural dyes.

These collections, Rema reflects, feel more introspective than her earlier work. There is a deeper engagement with texture—the uneven slubs, the gentle irregularities that only handcraft can offer. Particularly in Dabu, unpredictability becomes part of the design language. A slight variation in indigo, harda, alum, or even sunlight alters the outcome entirely. “Each piece carries within it a moment,” she notes, an unrepeatable meeting of hands, nature, and time. For Rema, this warmth and imperfection is what separates handmade cloth from anything produced mechanically.

Her time in Champa deeply informed the Nirangal saris. Sitting quietly near the weavers’ homes, observing daily rhythms and absorbing the colours of the landscape, she began experimenting with surplus yarns to create dramatic pallus using traditional pheras, or temple motifs. These motifs were reworked into new layouts, paired with dual-toned warp and weft combinations.

Alongside creating new saris, Rema has also been immersed in sari restoration—an initiative that grew organically from encounters with women unable to part with worn heirlooms. “There’s something deeply human about wanting to preserve memory through cloth,” she reflects. This understanding led to #CreateNewNarratives, a thoughtful service focused on repairing, reworking, and gently reimagining old saris through dyeing, printing, and careful upcycling—always without erasing their history.

When a sari arrives for restoration, emotion comes first. Only later does Rema assess fibre strength, weave, and colour. The process, she says, feels intuitive—like a quiet conversation with the cloth. Borders and pallus may remain untouched, while other sections are adapted so the sari can live on comfortably. Sometimes, heirloom saris are transformed into dupattas or shawls for younger generations, allowing memory to travel forward in new forms.

One restoration project, in particular, stays with her: a sari created by combining fragments from three generations—a mother’s cotton Gadwal, a grandmother’s hand-embroidered nylon sari, and elements of a vintage Banarasi. Worn for a son’s wedding, the final piece became a living heirloom, holding the presence of women no longer there. Moments like these reaffirm, for Rema, why restoration matters as much as creation.

For her, restoration is both sustainability and cultural preservation. It reduces the need for new production while keeping techniques, identities, and memories alive. “Perhaps the greatest joy,” she says, “is that the restored sari becomes entirely one of a kind.”

Price starts from Rs 3,500. Available online.

—manuvipin@newindianexpress.com

@ManuVipin

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