Winter is here and everyday is a party. Everybody is on a celebration trip be it food or clothes. And the traditional way as the exhibition Nayaab at The Lodhi recently displayed. The ethnic clothes extravaganza curated by Sharan Apparao and Rupa Sood had a variety of Indian designers including Ritu Kumar come together to celebrate traditional Indian weaves. We were invited to this event and loved the contemporary take to traditional Indian handloom, blockprint and embroidery.

Ritu Kumar is one of the foremost revivalists of Indian skills. Hence it is no surprise that her collection, that reigned the foyer, had a lot of heavy Kashmiri embroidery. She also displayed saris and other apparel in Kalamkari, Benarasi and zardorzi.

The other designers here – Akaaro, Pero, Kora, Divyam Mehta, Eka, Nalini Malhotra, En Inde, 11.11, Indian Textiles, Weavers Studio,Anavila Saris, Vriksh, Swati Kalsi, Shaw Brothers, Swati Garodia, Taika and PradeepPillai carried the back to roots ethos in their collection. Pero, for example, put quirky twists to saris with laces and beads. Gunjan Jain from Vriksh is a revivalist of Orissa styles and we remember buying her work in Kolkata many moons back. Gunjan had brought bright but rustic Bomkais and colourful Kotki sarees for Delhi fashionistas. Nayaab had an array of customers when we visited and it was heartening to see that the new designers evoked as much interest as the veterans. Morever not all of the fashion here catered to the big-fat-Indian-wedding industry and there was a host of items that were understated yet Indian in character.

In fact, Delhi NCR is on a tradition overload what with Aadi Utsav at Dilli Haat and the ongoing Lok Katha at IGNCA. Nayaab was a slightly urban approach to this euphoria. We at Delhi-Fun-Dos stand in pride with the richness called India and love any initiative to support our traditional skills and artisans. To this end, Nayaab was a Fun-Do indeed and we look forward to the next edition of this show.