Fashion Garments

CHENNAI: A group of young fashion technology students are camping in the obscure village of Angagputhur near Chennai to learn the art behind the warp and weft of aloe vera fabrics from an impoverished weaver, Sekar. The girls in their final year of their course on fashion apparel and merchandising, offered by the NIFT, Tirupur, had stumbled upon Sekar when they surfed the internet to know about fabrics made of natural fibres, particularly aloe vera. So they decided to do a live project for their final semester on aloe vera sarees by learning the entire process of ‘fibre to fabric’ that includes extraction of fibre, knotting, dyeing and weaving. Sekar has already trained students of NIFT, Chennai, and various other institutes from places like Nagercoil, Tiruchengodu and Virudhunagar. The department of textile engineering, IIT Delhi has agreed to help Sekar submit a report to the Central government on making sarees out of natural fibres. “Aloe vera has a lot of medicinal values. People who have skin allergy can wear it,” says Sekar, who lives in a small thatched house, which also doubles up as his workshop. He started making sarees out of aloe vera fibres only a year ago, but had been weaving fabrics out of banana, bamboo, pineapple and vegetable fibres for a long time. Though people come all the way from places like Canada to buy his natural fabric sarees, Sekar’s efforts to promote eco-friendly clothes in the city had not helped him make any money. “The government of India had started a board for natural fibres. It would help me to a great extent if I could become a member of the board,” says Sekar. Apparently, Sekar’s efforts to meet the textile minister had not been fruitful. “After submitting our project, we would talk to our college chairman and try to meet the textile minister as we found that there is no one to help promote such an effort,” says Jayashree, one of the students of the NIFT that is promoted by the Tirupur Exporters’ Association.

source:http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Poor+weaver+turns+%E2%80%98prof%E2%80%99+for+NIFT+girls&artid=ERlEG6puLFs=&SectionID=lifojHIWDUU=&MainSectionID=wIcBMLGbUJI=&SectionName=rSY%7C6QYp3kQ=&SEO=