Apparel April 2019 Apparel April 2019 issue | Page 80

BRAND PROFILE
THE INDIGO STYLE!
Anurima Das has a tête-à-tête with Alka Sharma, the founder of the brand
Aavaran, which promotes the indigenous craft of Dabu.
Her tryst with textiles and fabrics is a narrative
and is as humble as it sounds. She developed
a knack for textiles since childhood and formally
explored it over the years. Her efforts translated
on cloth through her brand Aavaran. Through her
brand, she took an effort to restore and sustain
the indigenous craft of Dabu (a hand-block
printing technique) from Rajasthan. Alka Sharma
sees layers of potential in textiles and believes in
taking efforts to empower the lowest rung of the
society with her craft!
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOU. HOW
DID YOU TAKE A FANCY TO TEXTILES?
As a child, if there’s anything that I was sure
of, it was that I would like to work with textiles.
Growing up in a traditional family in Alwar,
Rajasthan, I spent many afternoons watching my
grandmother make dhurries. I am talking of a time
when women in the family did not have much
to do after lunch. This process of seeing her
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engrossed with textiles inspired me. In 1999,
after my graduation, I got enrolled in the Indian
Institute of Crafts and Design, with a special
focus on textile designing. Then started my
formal journey with textiles.
DEALING WITH HANDMADE, HOW
CHALLENGING HAS THE JOURNEY
BEEN WITH AAVARAN?
Creating awareness about the handmade
craft and constantly taking efforts to revive
it is indeed challenging. Along with that, the
craft process, in itself, is also very challenging.
We have to keep a few things in mind along
the way that includes climatic challenges
when dealing with natural dyes and then
festive holidays. India’s unpredictable climatic
alterations do create a setback in the dyeing
process and push the natural dyes to act
moody. Then, we always have to count in the
absence of craftspeople from work owing to