Weave Malkha

Malkha was named to evoke the heyday of mulmul and the revolutionary power of khadi, Malkha’s mission has been to present an evolved alternative to the industrial model of making cotton, eliminating unnecessary steps in the journey from plant to cloth to preserve the earth and the intrinsic properties of cotton, rather than please the behemoth machines.

The Malkha model of producing handloom cotton revives the local nature, vibrancy, and diversity of the cotton-making process and native cotton species. It seeks to restore handloom cotton to its pre-colonial days of glory. Most significantly of all, it aims to restore dignity and livelihood, and ultimately financial and functional independence, to each producer in the cotton-making chain.

The Malkha insistence on using natural dyes rejuvenates interest in the complex art and science of natural dyeing. At the core of it, cotton is a finicky material, and so are natural dyes. As one Malkha member puts it, the combination of cotton and natural dyes is “... mind-blowingly capricious. Depending on the season, temperature, wind direction, the alignment of the stars, and the mood of polar bears, you get different colored and shaded fabrics. So achieving any kind of uniformity or consistency is not possible. No wonder hardly anyone sticks exclusively to natural dyes”. But we stubbornly do adhering to eco-friendly fashion. And in doing so, we embrace not just the vibrancy and brilliance of natural dyes, we embrace the fickleness of nature and the challenge of restoring dyeing [sic] art - the making of natural dyes and the elaborate preparation of cotton that is required for bright, permanent, washable colors.

What stands out in this fabric is the vibrancy of the colors, the way it drapes and swings. We believe this tremendous response to Malkha is a reflection of people’s intuitive appreciation for its unique qualities – the swing, the drape, the ability to breathe, to absorb, to hold color. Each step in the Malkha process - spinning, weaving, dyeing, and printing - plays a big role in imparting these qualities to the fabric. By handling the delicate cotton fibers gently, by avoiding the force and violence of conventional processing, it retains the springiness of the live fibers all the way into the cloth.