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Modern style of draping Saree
The increased interaction with the British saw most women from royal families come out of purdah in the 1900s. This necessitated a change of dress. Maharani Indira Devi of Cooch Behar popularised the chiffon saree. She was widowed early in life and followed the convention of abandoning her richly woven Baroda shalus in favour of the traditional unadorned white.
 
 

 
Characteristically, she transformed her ‘mourning’ clothes into high fashion. She had sarees woven in France to her personal specifications, in white chiffon, and introduced the silk chiffon saree to the royal fashion repertoire. The chiffon saree did what years of fashion interaction had not done in India. It homogenized fashion across this land. Its softness, lightness and beautiful, elegant, caressing drape was ideally suited to the Indian climate.


Different courts adopted their own styles of draping and indigenising the saree. In most of the courts the saree was embellished with stitching hand-woven borders in gold from Varanasi, delicate zardozi work, gota, makaish and tilla work that embellished the plain fabric, simultaneously satisfying both traditional demands and ingrained love for ornamentation.

Some images of maharanis in the Deccan show the women wearing a sleeveless, richly embellished waistcoat over their blouses. The Begum of Savanur remembers how sumptuous the chiffon saree became at their gatherings. At some courts it was worn with jaali, or net kurtas and embossed silk waist length sadris or jackets. Some of them were so rich that the entire ground was embroidered over with pearls and zardozi


 
 

Modern other styles........




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