By Sharanya Gopinathan
The good folks over at Border & Fall are back! They’ve given us wonderful gifts in the past like the photo they found of Frida Kahlo in a saree, and their amazing project showcasing all the different ways you can tie a saree. This time, they’re presenting a series of images about their campaign to introduce better practices into design and crafts made in India. The campaign, which consists of a set of rules that designers can add themselves to as signatories if they wanted to support and follow them, is from 2016, but the images representing each rule are brand new, and already sparking lots of interesting debate.
It’s really quite exciting, because the campaign includes statements like, “makers would do well to speak with humility and less ownership about ‘revival’ and ‘innovation’.” Here’s another favourite:
Another, already controversial post talks about the need to transcend marketing trends, and not fetishise or patronise karigars in advertisements for handmade clothing and crafts. The post directly calls out a recent Anita Dongre campaign and tags her for good measure too. If you check out the comments on any of these posts, but especially this one, you’ll also see some interesting debates going on, and find out that Anita Dongre herself has now pledged support to the campaign after being called out.
You can check out the full series here.