Miranda Hicks one of the 10 Finalists with her sari design reflecting Cornwall.
Image from The Telegraph.

Later this week, The Brent museum in London is set to unveil 10 designs showcasing the Sari which best reflects the reality of life in Britan. Here comes The British Sari Story.

According to the news story in The Telegraph, when Helen Scalway an artist fell in love with a design in a sari shop in South London.

The entire project began when an artist, Helen Scalway, spent three months sketching items that caught her fancy in a sari shop in Tooting, an Asian area in south London. Her work was seen at a lecture by Susan Roberts, who runs Bridging Arts, an organisation which uses arts to bring different cultures closer.

Roberts contacted Sital Punja, a businesswoman who owns Sari UK, a fashion label that collects old saris and turns them into western couture garments.

“The three of us had the idea of taking the whole project a step further by staging a competition to generate new sari designs,” Roberts told The Telegraph.

And who better to announce the winner than Baroness Flather? Yes, the lady, who is famous for wearing her saris in the House of Lords.

Talking about the contest Baroness Flather revealed that she was going to pick a special “temple sari” to wear from her 150 odd collection.

She hailed the arrival of the British sari as “very exciting” and said women could never go wrong with a sari: “On the very few occasions I wear a trouser suit in the House of Lords, people say, ‘you are not going to change, are you?’ ”

The contenders came up with a few interesting ideas

Hicks, who is studying textile design at University College, Falmouth, explained her motif: “I have created a sari design to reflect Cornwall. I took photos of Cornish life, mainly beaches, and used imagery that is typical of the area. Inspiration included Cornish ice-cream, and buckets and spades used on the beach.”

One design uses Indian and British buildings around the border, and CCTV cameras and red and blue, orange and green spots to denote the colours of the flags of India and the UK.

Shilpa Rajan, born in Canada to parents from India and now living and working as a freelance designer in Britain, chose the mango emblem for a summer sari after a walk along Ealing Road in Wembley.

“We know that summer has arrived once we see the mango-sellers’ pitches on the pavement with their big, brightly coloured umbrellas and stacks of mango boxes.”

Yet another takes its cue from the London Underground map.

The 10 designs have been manufactured as silk saris and the team hopes that the newer designs will become popular that they will shortly enter commercial production and hit the stores for Puja season next year.

Have you had / seen a sari that is off beat? Share your thoughts.

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