House of VastraDrawing the room.
The commission
A commission is not a faster route to a lehenga. It is a much slower one, taken because nothing on the rail is the piece already in your head.
You will meet the karigar who does the work. You will hold thread against your own skin in daylight before it is ordered. You will be told no at least once, and the no will be explained. In return the house asks for most of a year.
Five stages. Nobody skips one, including us.
We do not open a fabric book at the first meeting. We ask what time the ceremony starts, whether the mandap is lit by daylight or by tungsten, how far you will walk, how long you will sit, and who else is dressing in the same photograph.
A gold that sings at four in the afternoon goes muddy under a shamiana at nine. Deciding that before anything is drawn saves four months later.
Three plates come back, drawn by hand at quarter scale, with the embroidery mapped panel by panel and the thread counts written in the margin. You are expected to kill one of them outright.
The plate you approve is the plate we cut to. Changes after this stage cost months rather than money, and we will tell you which months.
Anil Sathe cuts a calico toile in Mumbai before a metre of silk is touched. He works to twelve measurements and argues about the shoulder, because a shoulder set half a centimetre wrong shows in every photograph and cannot be corrected afterwards.
The toile is then unpicked and becomes the pattern block. Embroidered panels are cut to that pattern; the pattern is never fitted around finished embroidery.
The first is the toile. The second is the silk shell, unembroidered and startlingly plain — most people find this the hardest appointment. The third has the panels tacked on so you can feel the weight, and this is where opinions about the dupatta change, which is exactly what the fitting is for.
The fourth is the full piece with your jewellery and your dupatta pinned as you will actually wear it. The fifth is a fortnight before the date, hemmed to the shoes on your feet that morning.
The label carries the name of the karigar who did the work — Rafiq Ansari if it came off the adda frame in Lucknow, Meena Devi if there is gota from Jaipur — and a number, because the pattern block is retired once the piece leaves.
We photograph it on you rather than on a stand, and the plate goes into the archive at Kala Ghoda. You can ask to see it in twenty years and it will be there.
The range is honest. Which end you land on is decided by the embroidery, not by us.
Conversation, drawing, and the plate you approve.
Calico toile, twelve measurements, the pattern block.
The frame. Embroidery, and nothing that can be hurried.
Last fitting, hem, press, photograph, archive.
Eight to nine hundred hours on a full bridal skirt is not a figure we round up. Five karigars sit at one adda frame, and the frame cannot be pushed without the silk puckering when it comes off. That is the whole reason the number at the bottom of this page is what it is.
Indicative, before the drawing. Firm the moment you approve one.
What moves the number
Hours on the frame, first and by a distance. Then whether the zari is drawn silver or metallised thread, how many separate techniques the piece asks for, and whether there is kundan or meenakari to be set by hand. Fabric is rarely the expensive part; the time is.
Thirty per cent falls due when you approve the drawing, forty when the embroidery goes onto the frame, the balance at the fourth fitting. The estimate you receive after the drawing is the price. If the work runs longer than we judged, that is our error and not your invoice.
A house that says yes to everything is a factory with better lighting.
Eight hundred hours on an adda frame does not compress. We would rather decline in the first meeting than deliver something thin in the sixth month.
Bring a photograph of somebody else’s lehenga and we will say no to that photograph. We will happily talk about what you actually liked in it — the neckline, the weight, the colour — and draw from there.
If the budget will not carry hand work, the honest answer is a piece from the rail, not a commission that quietly stops being one. We will show you the rail.
We fit the person in the room. Bring us a measurement you intend to reach by December and the fourth fitting becomes a rescue rather than a fitting.
Real zari is drawn silver, gilded, wound on a silk core — Ghulam Mustafa still draws ours in Varanasi. The substitute looks identical for two years and then does not.
If none of those are you, the next step is ninety minutes and costs nothing. Bring the date and photographs of the venue.
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