COOL WOOL

COOL WOOL

In Marwari, péro means to wear. That’s where the brand by Aneeth Arora, a textile graduate from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and a fashion graduate from National Institute of Fashion Technology, got its name. The ‘Indian-ness’ of Pero rests in the textile process where materials pass from the hands of one craftsman to the other, carrying forward the Indian tradition of hand-crafting and creating pieces that are unique. Their garments evoke a sense of culture from where it originates. For her latest collection, Arora collaborated with The Woolmark Company and Bhuttico, the Kullu-based wool weavers’ co-operative to revive traditional textiles like pattu. 

Arora says, “Since we are able to work with Merino wool right from the yarn stage, we could increase its usability throughout the collection. We have used it as yarn to do hand embroidery in our clothing, and also as the thread for our machine embroidery. We have used different thickness of yarn to create textures, knits with different textures. From the thinnest to the thickest form, we have experimented with it for weaving as well as for embellishment.”

The designer shares that not only is her brand a two-time winner at The International Woolmark Prize competition, but she has also been working with weavers in Kullu for a decade. “We realised that the strength of the weaves associated with Bhuttico is weaving traditional textiles from Kullu, so we used their skills and expertise to revive traditional textiles like pattu which we had not done so far with our Kullu weavers,” says she. 

How has the brand worked with traditional geometric patterns of pattu? “The geometric pattern that was seen on the pattus was incorporated in the clothing in the form of engineered textiles, which we made keeping the placement of motifs in mind and how they will show on the garment. The fact that we weaved these Kullu borders was very exciting because we believe in a lot of detailing. Since we use a lot of trims in the clothes, we developed these tapes in our colours and used them in our collection,” explains Arora. 

The collection includes chunky oversized jackets, overalls, dresses, and a huge variety of tops and bottoms. “As far as silhouettes, we have pretty much covered all bases right from flowy dresses to very structured jackets within this collection which was launched at Lakmé Fashion Week Summer Resort 2019,” she says, adding, “We start working on our collection more than a year in advance, so our colour palette was very much in place which was shades of blue and khaki. We came across electric blue pattus and therefore we decided to make that a bigger colour than just an accent colour in our clothing.” 

She explains that Péro’s idea of sustainability is not the same as other people think about it. “For us, it is about working with the same set of craftspeople and challenging their skills and ourselves to create something new with the same skillset. Suitability means we work with the same set of people season after season and providing them work and not make them feel that it is a fashion brand and since fashion changes every six months, we will not work with them afterwards since we have done something new with them once,” ends Arora.

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