Genelia Deshmukh’s summer-appropriate sari highlighted bandhani and thread embroidery

As the forecast brightens, Genelia Deshmukh will convince you to make saris your first port of call. For a recent outing, she turned to an elegant green drape by Label Anushree. Constructed using breathable bandhani, it will appeal to lovers of craft, colour and comfort.

Styled by Pranay Jaitly and Shounak Amonkar, Genelia Deshmukh’s forest green silk sari was offset with intricate red dots characteristic of bandhani. The age-old art form, native to Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, dates back to the Ajanta Caves, which depict women in apparel featuring tie-dye patterns. These patterns were also seen in twelfth-century Jain manuscript paintings. Across generations, bandhani has retained its status as a top choice for women of a certain elegance. Its heritage craft comes with its own lexicon—the Sanskrit word banda, which translates to ‘to tie’. Bandhani comes to life through a resist-dyeing technique, where the textile is plucked with fingernails and tied with a cotton thread, forming figurative designs such as elephants, parrots, peacocks, dancing humans, flowers, diamond-shaped barfis, and mango-inspired paisleys. Eventually, the fabric is dyed in the desired colour. It is a labour- and time-intensive process that can take anywhere between four months to a year to complete, depending on the number of artisans involved, but the results are unparalleled.