Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines

altermag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 49 posts

Re: Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines

#3

Post by HexDecOctBin »

> Yet, the market for "Indian Luxury" is booming globally. We see European houses acting as colonial curators of Indian heritage: Prada rebranding the Kolhapuri chappal for ₹84,500 ($930); Gucci selling the common kurta as an 'exotic kaftan' for the price of a small car; and Dior releasing a ₹18,180,000 ($200,000) coat dripping in Lucknowi Mukaish work without a whisper of credit to the artisans. The global appetite for the aesthetic is ravenous. But in Kanchipuram, the very hands that feed this hunger are vanishing.

The Western colonial imperial system never truly went away, it simply morphed into an opaque inscrutable machinery to make it palatable to its own highly refined taste. An empire of human rights.

Re: Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines

#5

Post by meerab »

This is a greatly researched article, and the site is just awesome!

Kanchipuram Saree has a rich history, and I learned so much more by reading this article.

I am intrigued by the Kanchipuram saree and have dreamed about owning one. The digital ledger is a unique idea – if authenticity is established, it would be easy to invest in this as art piece.

Re: Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines

#6

Post by alephnerd »

HexDecOctBin wrote: post #3

> Yet, the market for "Indian Luxury" is booming globally. We see European houses acting as colonial curators of Indian heritage: Prada rebranding the Kolhapuri chappal for ₹84,500 ($930); Gucci selling the common kurta as an 'exotic kaftan' for the price of a small car; and Dior releasing a ₹18,180,000 ($200,000) coat dripping in Lucknowi Mukaish work without a whisper of credit to the artisans. The global appetite…

It's India's State and Local Governments are promoting this - most artisans that manufacturing these goods are doing so as part of a cooperative as Khadi and MSME Cooperatives is a major pillar for Indian politics and economic development, along with One District One Product [0] in order to build a heritage consumer goods industry similar to what Japan did.

It's also something that is deeply personal for Narendra Modi and Amit Shah [1] as they started their political careers climbing up the cooperative ladder - they were able to turn Gujarat from being a Congress only state to a BJP only state by co-opting cooperatives in the dairy industry [2]. And in Kancheepuram's case it's an extremely important industry in TN.

Furthemore, if Prada or Chanel buys Indian heritage artisan goods and gives it the luxury veneer, it helps MSMEs and khadi cooperatives demand better terms when wholesaling light manufactured products.

Finally, at a personal level, much of my family is associated with Khadi and Cooperative industries - they are one of the only ways to build medium or even high value industries while giving participants some degree of agency. The profits of khadi goods being sold at high margins ends up in the hands of cooperative members and cooperatives tend to re-invest in capacity building or subsidizing new entrants. This is why you see cooperative banks dot all of India.

[0] - https://www.investindia.gov.in/one-district-one-product

[1] - https://theprint.in/opinion/politically-correct/rahul-gandhi...

[2] - https://scroll.in/article/858585/amul-is-now-a-congress-mukt...

Re: Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines

#9

Post by alephnerd »

meerab wrote: post #5

This is a greatly researched article, and the site is just awesome! Kanchipuram Saree has a rich history, and I learned so much more by reading this article. I am intrigued by the Kanchipuram saree and have dreamed about owning one. The digital ledger is a unique idea – if authenticity is established, it would be easy to invest in this as art piece.

You don't need a digital ledger - these are ODOP goods [0] so it's fairly straigtforward to identify authenticity based on the wholeseller's GI tag [1].

GI Tagging for ODOP products is taken extremely seriously as the products associated with ODOP tend to be associated with locally powerful khadi cooperatives and because this is a personal project of Modi and Shah as they started their political careers in Khadi Cooperatives and Amit Shah is the Cooperation (as in Cooperatives and Khadi) Minister, so complaints tend to be taken seriously. Additionally, textile cooperatives are extremely important in TN as well, and the TN government closely enforces it's GIs as well as building their own e-commerce platform and showrooms for selling cooperative goods [2].

[0] - https://www.investindia.gov.in/one-district-one-product

[1] - https://kancheepuram.nic.in/about-district/gi-tag-product-ka...

[2] - https://www.cooptex.com/

Re: Kanchipuram Saris and Thinking Machines

#10

Post by arjie »

That was a pretty fun article. Nice use of parallax scrolling and everything.

An amusing personal connection is that my wife wore a sari for our wedding (I'm from Chennai) and I wore a sherwani that she, a graphic designer, designed with Dall-E's assistance. A friend of ours knows an embroiderer in Bangalore who then put the design to the coat. Loved it, to be honest: https://x.com/arjie/status/1855328068883353665

Saris (not quite from Kanchipuram - American fabric) and Thinking Machines!

Post reply on HN