Esther ✾ South Cotton Dress ✾ 18

Astha and Sidharth is not just an eponymous label. Our work is a conversation about the present transitional nature of our country, we create products that dwell from the soil of our nation but mutate them to a more contemporary form. We often try to add a twist to the banality of a craft, intentionally breaking the stereotypes and creating distinctiveness.

It is a matter of lasting happiness, dispelling the feeling of boredom and creating exhilarating experience, this is the nature of our work. We don’t work we play and throw ourselves into it with great energy and dedication. Rambling around India we came across some of the most enchanted frontiers and our love for textiles deepened to an undreamt depth. When the whole world is racing for something or the other, there comes a place where life has its own relaxed pace and simplicity, where they are not striving for perfection but yearn for a fresh aesthetic experience functioning to their fullest potential .That is where the most beautiful handlooms take birth. Their tales have become our inspiration. Working with handloom like Khadi, Chanderi, Jamdani and crafts like block printing and tie and dye , we try and retell these stories through our products .We constantly strive for doing meaningful work and for better quality of working life for people who are associated with us.

The story is about farmers and herders, who tamed the wild, breed edible seeds and food, about merchants and craftspeople who braved mountains and deep waters to exchange knowledge, about rustic engineers and metallurgists who first hammered copper. Their combined contribution to our normal routine lives is much greater than what warriors have accomplished or emperors have bequeathed. We work with the same ethos, contributing and trying our best to bring about the change in the little ways that we can.

This collection has been made by amalgamating the various textures of this textile into relaxed silhouettes. It is of extreme importance for the buyer and wearer of this product, to understand that each yarn of their outfit has been woven with utmost precision. It was through the composure of the dresser, patience of the winder and diligence of the weaver that this fabric could be produced.

Block printing is a very scrupulous and meticulous technique of printing where each color in the design is intricately carved on wooden block. It is further stamped over the fabric repeatedly color by color. Elephants, peacocks, paisleys, lotus, leaves etc. are chiseled and carved on sheesham wood and brought to life when stamped with color on fabric.

We try and experiment with this craft by putting this traditional technique into a more contemporary form.