Indian textiles

Where to begin? For someone as obsessed with textiles, colors, and patterns as I am, India was a non-stop visual feast. This was our room at Shahpura House, a "heritage hotel," in Jaipur. We'd never before stayed anywhere with such fabulous bedlinens. 

It seemed that nearly every surface at Shahpura House was painted and carved in and with traditional Rajasthani patterns and details:

Ceiling view

Common area

Despite the fact that we were in India primarily to attend the wedding of the wonderful Gayatri Singh and Benjamin Clark, most of the photographs I took were of art and architectural details, like the above, and at City Palace in Jaipur. This is one of my favorite shots from the trip, and is of a corner:

But wait, you say: isn't this blog about clothes? Of course it is. Of course. And the shopping in India was as marvelous as I had hoped. We (I) wisely packed 2 extra bags inside our checked luggage so that we could get everything home. Here are just a few samples of clothes I bought, each representing different textile traditions from South Asia.

At FabIndia, I found this black sleeveless top which has Kashmiri-style crewelwork embroidery, which I actually wore under my wedding sari (shhh!):

At Anokhi, I bought an indigo-dye top with lovely red contrast detail on the button loops:

And at Soma, I fell in love with the circular block print designs on this top, which has a solid brown border and a jaunty cut on the bottom:

Of course, it wouldn't have been a trip to Soma without buying a bright silk chiffon block print scarf. So many times on this trip I thought, "Hooray for marigold yellow and marigold orange!" 

I also found my new favorite pants at Soma. They're more of a Western cut (I don't love the baggy drawstring thing on most Indian pants - not at 5' tall), and they're machine washable... unlike that crewelwork top and (oh god) that indigo shirt. 

Best of all, though, was when I found the little pendant painting of Ganesh at the City Palace shop in Jaipur, pictured here on the new Soma pants, because I realized that Ganesh and I were wearing THE SAME PANTS. 

There's so much more to muse about - the cultural collisions of old and new India everywhere we turned, other block prints and embroidery traditions (in which I'll bust out photos of my Bangladesh purchases from 2008), Turkish tilework from our whirlwind 36 hours in Istanbul, and a year-end roundup, but I'm going to sign off for now with one last picture, showing that there's good design in India even on matchbooks:

Namaste,

Kelley