The Offbeat Sari

The Offbeat Sari explores how the sari has become a site for design innovation, an expression of identity, a form of resistance, and a crafted object carrying layers of cultural meanings.

In recent years, the sari has been reinvented. The urban youth, who previously associated the sari with dressing up, can now be found wearing saris and sneakers on their commutes to work. Designers are experimenting with hybrid forms such as sari gowns and dresses, pre-draped saris, and innovative materials like steel.

Wearers are embodying the sari as a vessel for dynamism rather than pageantry. Individuals are wearing the sari as an expression of resistance to social norms, and activists are embodying it as an object of protest. Today, the sari manifests as a site for design innovation, an expression of identity, and a crafted object carrying layers of cultural meanings.

Since the exhibition will focus on the sari in urban India, the book will follow suit with this remit. It comprises a series of commissioned essays by notable Indian writers, expanding on some of the themes central to the definition of the sari in contemporary India and pegged to objects displayed in the exhibition.