Khesh

Most of the designs you wear from Prathaa has a story and here's your Khesh story ... In Jan 2016, team Prathaa decided to travel to Shantiniketan in West Bengal’s Birbhum district. It’s in the small town of Bolpur. It was here that Rabindranath Tagore established the Visva-Bharati University to promote a more liberated form of education. That’s how Shantiniketan became the seat of art and culture. The objective of our visit was an in-depth study of the various forms of weaves. We spent over a week with the weavers and artisans - lived and shared their lives. Inspired and motivated by their hard work and artistry, the team got involved in the creation process too… It was in Birbhum we stumbled upon Khesh weaving - a tradition which has been practiced for years. The weaving technique essentially involves tearing old sarees into thin strips - the warp has the new thread and the weft uses the thin strips of sarees. The weavers collect cotton sarees and it is the women who patiently tear the sari into multiple long strips. It is up to the weaver to match the warp with the weft and create designs. The beauty of a Khesh fabric is that the colour of the recycled weft fabric keeps changing, sometimes even within a single meter of fabric and that precisely is the uniqueness of this fabric. These handloom cotton fabrics are hand woven and the asymmetry/ irregularities in the weaves makes them exclusive.