The Craft.
A loom in Banaras has been weaving Banarasi for six hundred years.
The Patola tradition in Patan goes back eight. Ponduru's takli wheels have turned in the same village since the sixteenth century. We did not invent any of this. We only made sure it does not stop.
Six regions, one atelier.
We travel to six saree regions on a recurring rotation, every piece on this site picked up where it was made.
- BanarasUttar PradeshBanarasi silk · zari brocadesince the 14th century
- KanchipuramTamil NaduKanjeevaram silk · temple-border zarisince the 4th century
- PatanGujaratDouble-ikat Patolasince the 11th century
- PonduruSrikakulam, Andhra PradeshHandspun khadi · jamdanitakli wheels since the 16th century
- MaheshwarMadhya PradeshMaheshwari silk-cottonsince the 18th century
- BhagalpurBiharTussar silksince the 12th century
How a saree is made.
One loom. One length of cloth. Six and a half yards of warp stretched the length of the workshop, fed weft by weft through the shuttle until the body, the pallu, and the blouse piece have all been woven as one continuous textile.
The body is the everyday — the cloth that drapes the lower half. The pallu is the front-of-photograph end, where motif and zari sit. The blouse piece is the matched length the saree always shipped with — same weave, same threads, woven on the same loom on the same day.
That last detail is the test of a real handloom: turn the saree over. If the motif on the pallu carries through to the reverse, the loom did it. If the reverse is flat and the threads are cut, a machine did.
The hands that wove this.
Most of the looms we buy from are run by master weavers in their sixties and seventies — the generation that learned the loom from their mothers, who learned from theirs. The work is slow. A single Ponduru takes seven weeks of takli spinning and three weeks at the loom. A Patola can take six months.
We do not quote prices on this site that we cannot justify. The reason a Ponduru runs upwards of ₹30,000 is because it has to. Anything less, and the next generation chooses a different trade. The loom does not survive that arithmetic.
Done in Hyderabad.
Once a piece arrives at our atelier in Kokapet, the rest happens in one place — the blouse stitched by our master tailors, the fall and pico finished, the saree pressed, folded, packed, and shipped. The cloth lands once and goes out once. No middle warehouse, no third-party stitcher, no surprise delay.
The same standard applies to a ₹6,000 cotton handloom and a ₹2L heirloom Patola. The piece that goes out of here goes out finished.
What gets sent back.
A part of every saree we sell goes somewhere it should. The details live on our story page; the short version is that the brand contributes to organisations working with women in need, and to children whose families cannot easily fund their schooling. The contribution scales as the brand scales. We do not run discounts on it.