At Khadi India’s Lakmē Fashion Week show, I let go of my grief

My first memory of Khadi goes through my late father. Before attending my first fashion week, I had read enough to know that fashion shows could transcend the usual cycles of trade and seasons to move glasses. When Alexander McQueen organized his show “Dante” (autumn / winter 1996) in a Baroque church in London, he shouted the rebellion – Gunfire opened the show, with lamb lambeaux, military jackets and a religious iconography which storm the track. Sabyasachi’s “opium” show, 2013 spoke of a decomposing Haveli, with crystal chandeliers. And who could forget the collection of Galliano’s fall 1994, made to perfection despite the fact that it is mowing and sleeping on the floor of a friend?

When a fashion show becomes a real spectacle, it reaffirms because it goes against the grain of conventional thought. How can the track move us? Or, make us cry literally? And yet, Khadi India’s show, hidden quietly in the middle of a calendar of the busy fashion week populated by star designers, did more for my grief than anything else.

When I was young, I was busy pursuing trends and assimilating Khadi to a cheap kora. Once, my father brought this fabric back to grape fuels to be transformed into Kurta for my mother of the Khadi Grama Saubhagy store, now disappeared, near our house, near the Chendamangalam weaving cluster in Kerala. My father said to me better: “Khadi is much more than what you have taught in your history books, but the world is far too caught in trends to see its potential.”

With kind permission: Fathima Abdul Kader