A regular day in rural Punjab in the 1900s would start quite early in the morning. The men of the family would go to the fields and tend to the livestock, while women would complete their household tasks, such as cooking and cleaning. Once finished with their daily chores, the women would participate in Trinjan, a communal activity where they would gather in groups and spend their time embroidering and weaving clothes. Women would embroider mainly on cotton or Khaddar fabrics, which they also weaved themselves.

The embroideries they created held a lot of sentimental value and were never produced for commercial use at that time. There were even special types of embroidery which had to be done by specific members of the family, on certain occasions, symbolizing emotions like joy and prosperity. (Aziz, 2017) A young girl’s life in rural Punjab began with watching her mother and grandmother creating beautiful embroideries, which later would be used as a commemoration of her coming of age, when she would start wearing those embellishments, while also learning the techniques herself from her elders. Then, at the time of her marriage, her in-laws would be presented with these embroidered fabrics as a part of her dowry. When she would take a step into motherhood, she would wear a Phulkari, as part of the tradition that new mothers wear Phulkaris while leaving the room for the first time on the eleventh day after the child is born. (Dr. Prof. Amarjeet Kaur, Ankita Kallan, 2018) As the child grows, they would again witness their mother weaving and stitching, and the tradition will continue to live on with the upcoming generations.

So, what is Phulkari? To say that it is just an artistic embroidery technique made by weaving colorful silk threads on a cotton fabric depicting motifs and florals would be an understatement. Words cannot materialize the voices of the Bibis and Bharjaayis sitting together, singing, gossiping, and telling stories to the young ones. Those voices were also threaded along in the needles and weaved into the ‘Reshmi’ dupattas. When a bride wore a Phulkari, it would feel like her mother was embracing her innocence one last time, before she stepped into her new life and created her own little world.

If I had to describe Phulkari to someone who has never seen it before, I would describe it as a warm sunset in the countryside. The patterns are like the wide azure of fields, very uniform and harmonious. The colors are a riot of bright hues with a touch of golden sunshine and the texture of the weaved threads feels like the sudden wave of the dusk wind which brushes against your face. It is the moment, when you experience just the perfect balance between the warmth of the setting sun and the arrival of the cold night.

As the magic tours blog informs, Phulkaris exist in various forms, each having its own significance:

  • Chope; which is a maternal grandmother’s gift to her granddaughter on her wedding day.

  • Bagh; which resembles a floral garden embroidered all over the fabric.

  • Sainchi; which includes human figures, depicting the village life and narrating stories.

  • Darshan Dwar; which were presented at religious places and included architectural motifs.

  • Thirma; which were embroidered motifs on plain white fabrics worn by widows and senile women.

As the technique found its way to the modern world, it was commercialized and now is mostly done using machine embroidery, although there are also artisans who handcraft it for commercial use. To this day, the traditions, folk songs and poems continue to live on in Punjab and have been embraced by the rest of the world.

As a fashion designer and an artist hailing from a small town in Punjab, Phulkari has been one of the earliest fashion influences for me. Until I stepped into the fashion industry, I had always perceived embroidery as something more personal and close to the heart. One can only imagine the amount of hours it takes to embroider almost two meters of fabric. It had always been a dream of mine to be able to create something like that and to put the time and energy and weaving each strand of thread, one by one into the fabric and witnessing the progress and creation of such an embellishment.

Yet, when I did get the opportunity to experience it, I tasted nothing but regret and frustration.

We live in the world of haute couture, one of the finest amalgamations of art and fashion. Today, fashion doesn’t just have to be practical and realistic to our daily needs, it can be rough, deconstructed, multifunctional, delicate, and fragile. The idea of a garment made from thousands and thousands of swarovskis and sequins embroidered by hand, constituting a labor of 10,000 hours, is not new and also not unbelievable. Such garments are unique, glamorous, and breathtaking; although for the people who create them by pouring hours of their lives into it while still not being recognised for their hard work, not so much. Though for this article, my focus lies quite specifically on interns in the fashion industry.

As inexperienced fresh graduates from a normal fashion school, young creatives get internships as opportunities to gain "experience," although in today’s world, no one is ever “experienced” enough and no livelihood can be supported just by experience. What’s more astonishing is the fact that various “couture” brands use internships as a means of acquiring unpaid labor. Consider this, as I interviewed for an internship at a certain brand, one of the questions I was asked by the HR was, “Here’s a situation: let’s say you just finished making a dress and ‘the designer’ and you have a look at it, and they think that the dress would look stunning with 10,000 Swarovski crystals on it and would like for you to embroider the crystals on the dress; what do you do?” As a desperate rookie, who just got out of fashion school, my answer, of course, was, “I’d say let's get to work and start stitching.”

Little did I know that the question was actually literal and not at all metaphorical. In fact, a month later, the HR confirmed at a team event that this particular question is part of every interview, and if you answer it differently, then of course, you do not get selected. Moreover, as part of these internships, not only do you have to do full time labor, embroidering coats and dresses for eight hours a day, but certain days of the week are designated as “cleaning ays." That’s when you finish your ‘embroidering’ early in order to clean the whole studio, including the kitchen and the bathroom. Now, if I were a maiden living in a Punjabi village, these activities would be part of my daily routine, and I would not mind doing them; considering that it is a part of my life. But, as an international immigrant who spent hundreds and thousands on college tuition, just to do these chores for a brand that ‘looks cool on Instagram’, it’s not the best circumstance.

There is a certain striking contrast among these two situations, given the result in both cases is an embellished garment/fabric. Although the time taken to create these garments in both situations is more or less equal and the results are just as beautiful, the feelings and the state of the artisan handcrafting them, are not really the same.

This article has two purposes: first, creating more awareness about a certain North Indian handcrafting technique; and second, unveiling another one of the ugly sides of the fashion industry. Being a huge contributor to unethical practices is not new to the fashion industry; it is one of the very known problems of this industry, and fashion enthusiasts and consumers are perfectly aware of it as well. What’s missing is just a real change. Here is yet another protest for a wave of change. Fashion, creative techniques, embellishments—all these terms find their roots in culture and tradition. Historically, these techniques added sentimental value to garments, not just external beauty.

It is time to focus on the real roots of fashion and bring back the real reason why these techniques were created.

Notes

1 Aziz, A. (2017). Phulkari baghs of the Punjab: Another perspective. Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Australia (TAASA), 26(3), 4-6.
2 The Threads of Emotions- Phulkari : DR. Prof Amarjeet Kaur; Ankita Kallan : Internet Archive. (2018,July 12).
3 The Magic Tours Blog.