Celebrating a common Indian cloth that's loved by designers globally
Live MintShe doesn’t have a specific memory of seeing a gamchha for the first time, but former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly remembers being greeted at political meetings in West Bengal and Odisha with the cotton cloth woven with checks and stripes. This simple, coarse fabric, typically 70x35 inches in length and width, which traces its origin to the working-class communities’ need for a practical, multipurpose cloth, has been around for a long time. View Full Image This simple, coarse fabric, typically 70x35 inches in length and width, which traces its origin to the working-class communities’ need for a practical, multipurpose cloth, has been around for a long time. In 2010, Rajesh Pratap Singh made a fitted red-and-white check jacket, now part of the permanent collection at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, from the gamchha fabric. The gamchha’s future, according to her, involves maintaining the existing market while simultaneously exploring newer avenues for the fabric in other sectors such as fashion without making it exclusively a high-end product.
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