Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the interrelations between luxury embroidery, phantasms produced by designers and the meanings of femininity in contemporary India.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed research paper is based on extensive fieldwork in North India (New Delhi and Lucknow) that tries to understand contemporary India through the lens of the material, namely through relationships that emerge in the process of production and consumption of particularly high quality Chikan embroidery. This paper explores notions of femininity in contemporary India as experienced and conceptualized by upper class urban women. Taking its point of departure in the material, it inquires into the ways in which the multiple and often contradictory notions of femininity are projected on, as well as believed to dwell in luxury embroidered garments. The analysis, linking the material to the social, focuses on how the imaginary and the real, the desired and the suppressed, and the relationships of hierarchy and negotiations of status, find their expression in the women's interactions with the luxury garments. The paper addresses a range of notions, from modesty to seduction, excess and waste to the moral of simplicity and restriction, from the desire to be a little of a 'vamp' to the coterminous desire to be the ideal 'pativrata', to be 'modern' yet 'traditional'. Investigating various meanings of the luxury Chikan embroidery, from its associations with the royal courts of the Nawabs of Awadh, via its seductive appeal linked to its popularity with courtesans of the days past, to its contemporary use in the imaginaries created by haute couture designers, the article circles around liminal areas of fashion, where relationships between garments and the fantasies, sexuality and unfulfilled dreams of these women meet reality.