First weaver visit of the season

I fly to India twice a year for two weeks at a time. This is the first trip of the 2026 season — Banaras for three days, Lucknow for two, a Sunday with a Kanchipuram weaver who travels up to Mumbai to meet me halfway because his train schedule is more reliable than the flights.

Banaras was hot. It is always hot in Banaras. I sat for an entire morning with a master weaver whose loom has produced cloth for four generations of his family, and we discussed — for two hours, with cups of chai in between — exactly what shade of green he could achieve in real silver-gilt zari on a kadhua weave. He pulled out three different sample patches. None of them were quite the green I had in my head. We are going to keep talking.

In Lucknow, the chikankari masters I work with showed me a new stitch pattern — not new exactly, but old and almost forgotten — that one of their grandmothers used in pieces for the Nawab court. We are going to put it on the next collection's anarkalis. I have not told the women I work with in Sydney yet because I want them to be surprised when the samples arrive.

And on Sunday in Mumbai, the Kanchipuram weaver and I argued for an hour about whether oxblood is too dark for a bridal saree. I said: it depends on the bride. He said: it depends on the mother. He is probably more right than I am.

More from the trip later in the week. We are still in talks with a new bandhani cluster in Bhuj — I'll write about them if it works out.