David Abraham and his work need no introduction... over the years his brand Abraham & Thakore
has built a special place in the fashion world for its creativity and innovative developments in fabric.
As a designer, David believes in handloom and handloom-friendly yarns like cotton and silks, which
he engineers for originality. The bases of all his collections, which are shown to his niche market, both
domestically and internationally are fabric developments. The collections are pretty much the same for
both markets and the volumes, even for exports are small. “Our fabric is fairly simple, it's quite strong in
construction with a reduced sensibility, it's the kind of handwriting which runs through all our fabric,”
says David in a one o' one interaction with AO's Textile Team.
AO: How do you go about
your fabric development?
David Abraham: We do our
fabric developments six months
in advance; our lead times
are not as long as the larger
manufacturers, as we work
closer to the season. Suppose
we are doing a fashion collection
based on a particular theme,
then the colour story develops
from that and these colour
forecasts are also made six
months ahead. We use more
or less the same colours for
both the home and apparel
division. Once the theme and
its colours are sealed we start
the developments on fabrics
accordingly; we do some woven,
some prints and some solids.
In case of weaving, most of
the sampling is done on the
handlooms for which we have
a group of weavers with whom
we work steadily through every
season all over the country.
We cannot do these kinds of
developments in-house with
the kind of
quality that we need. It gives the flexibility to work with different weaves and constructions; for example, we can work with 100 singles in West Bengal, something that cannot be done in Delhi. Then we do a lot of Ikkats, double Ikkats and that can only be done by an Ikkat weaver.
Both my partner Rakesh Thakore
and I are textile designers,
trained from NID, hence how to
weave is no mystery for us as
we pretty much know what we
want. We would start with doing
about 40 metres for sampling and
then depending on the type of
garments that have to be made
from it – sarees, dresses, shirts,
etc. we decide the final length to
be produced, however it’s limited
to just about a few 100 metres.
With better communications,
we do not even need to sit with
them anymore to get the samples
done. They are very sophisticated
and we communicate through
email images, Jpeg’s shooting
back and forth, communicating
over telephone; it all goes quite
fast now.
AO: So you just use
handlooms only?
David Abraham: We do power
loom fabrics as well for certain
products. But, for the key
branded products which are
our main focus, we tend to work
mostly with handloom fabrics;
firstly that’s something we
believe in very strongly and as an
Indian designer I believe that it
is USP of India, if you are looking
at the middle to luxury space.
AO: Which fibre do you
prefer to work with?
David Abraham: We work
more with natural fibres, a lot
with cotton and silk; however we use viscose and blends too.
Today, viscose is getting a lot of
acceptability even with top-end
brands like Prada. In traditional
fabrics no one can beat India,
but in contemporary fabric
which is about technology, and
which the Japanese, Italian or
other European countries have
access to, India still has to reach
there. Indian manufacturers do
not believe in R&D that much;
we are still a country which
likes to manufacture what
others tell us to manufacture.
Here manufacturers are not
ready to take risk and if you
have to develop something new
you have to be very sure that
either it would be accepted or
it would be rejected. We don’t
want to develop brands of our
own; we believe in importing
other brands and distributing
it. The design community is
quite small here and our textile industry is very short sighted;
we have manufacturers and
converters here but still we are
nowhere on the world map with
our own brands.
AO: Besides fibre quality
what all construes a
high-end fabric?
David Abraham: I would say
the engineering of the fabric
is what matters. Things which
we can do on a handloom, we
cannot really do on power
looms or air-jets. We design
the fabric according to what
silhouette it would be cut
into; most of the time the
fabric dictates how we cut; every piece is engineered,
say for example we created
fabric for male collection on
hounds tooth; every piece is
engineered with a border; you
plan and weave it in such a
way that each piece can be cut
separately and turned into a
garment. It’s quite complex
and very expensive to do and
obviously it goes to a customer
who understands.
We do a lot of engineering
into the fabrics, working out
the repeat size or we weave
just the central panel of the
front of a dress basically the
pattern, so they had to weave
the fabric with us and we were
working on how to cut it so
we only weaved it back and
forth… so it’s a huge amount
of engineering which goes into
it and it costs a premium and
that’s the reason why we want
to continue to work with it.
Since we use a lot of handloom
fabrics which is taken from
saree weavers, the pick ratio
is not strong enough to take
certain structures, so that
dictates the nature of the
garment also like sizing, shape,
etc. therefore, a final product
has a very strong relationship
with the fabric.
AO: Which all areas do
you go for handloom
weaving?
David Abraham: We generally
go to West Bengal, Andhra
Pradesh and Maheshwar. I know
Varanasi is also a strong base,
but somehow we found it very difficult to work with weavers
there. It seemed to us that
the weavers were inflexible;
whereas the weavers that we
work with are very flexible in
developments. For example,
when we did our last show here,
it took us just about six weeks
from the concept to fabric in
double Ikkat. Our regular
weavers do all the techniques
from hounds tooth, screen
printing, block printing, almost
everything and it’s very easy to
work with them because they
know what we want as we have
been working with them since a
long time.
AO: How do you create
value for your creations?
David Abraham: When we
are doing our own collections,
we tend to focus on higher
price points. But, then we
have to also move down the scale because we also do a
co-branded line with Wills
Lifestyle and are in the process
of launching another line with a
domestic chain, so if one moves
down the price point, then
obviously you have to dilute
the fibre composition, adopt
medium weaving techniques,
move away from handloom and
use it just for top-end products.
We may sample and develop
a design in block printing but
when we start doing volumes
and have to give a better price,
we obviously move to screen or
rotary printing.
AO: Handloom industry is really
dying... poor weavers sitting in Barabanki (UP) or Jaunpur
(UP) are weaving everyday
gamchaas (towel size cloth to
dry body after bath), they don’t
even know that they can create
very high-end stoles for the
international market. How do
you think they can be brought
into the mainstream?
David Abraham: I personally
think that ultimately in the
long run handcraft in India will
survive only if it’s targeted for
the luxury space. I think the
mass market, at the lower price
point, is unviable for the maker
who spends a whole day to
weave one gamchaa and gets
Rs. 50 for it. He should rather
switch over to something else
like even selling tea or should
be just weaving one saree
which would sell at Rs. 40,000/-.
It’s very important that this
segment is repositioned as
‘luxury’ to keep it alive.
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