Threads: Sustaining India's Textile Traditions, Directed by Katherine Sender and Shuchi Kothari, Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources. 2022. 58 min

Abstract

India's textile and clothing worlds are marked by a distinctive model of creative interaction between “designers” and “artisans.” Referencing different skills and social positions, this designer–artisan dyad was relationally configured during India's post-colonial transition in the 1940–50s, imbued with distinctively modernist ambitions of national development. Such imperatives remain prominent in pedagogy at Indian design schools, where novice designers are routinely taught to develop relationships with artisans and position themselves as intermediaries between “village” traditions and world markets. At a moment when fashion industry institutions globally are grappling with colonial legacies, Threads: Sustaining India's Textile Traditions takes up the question of how, and on what terms, Indian fashion designers and textile artisans perceive value in their shared projects.