Itajime Box Dress - Taxila

A loose and one size box dress, designed for easy wear and comfort (with a touch of glamour!), crafted in luxurious habutai silk. An easy slip-on falling to ankle length; wear it as a kaftan-style dress, or over jeans or harem style pants. Wide-cut body with relaxed silhouette - Mitered V-neckline, dropped shoulders with box sleeves and side slits.

Please note that every piece of fabric is clamped and dyed individually, so there are small variations in colour and pattern between pieces.

The model is 5'6" tall.

Story Behind the Design

The Itajime Silk Collection has been hand-crafted in the workshop of two of India's foremost Master Craftsmen; Jabbar and brother Abdullah Khatri from Bhuj, Gujarat.

Shibori is a 1300 year old tie and dye technique developed in Japan involving the folding and clamping or otherwise securing of fabric prior to dyeing. Itajime is one technique of shibori which uses pieces of wood clamped together around sections of folded fabric to resist the dye in particular shapes. Each 3m section of fabric is individually folded, clamped, tied and dyed; and this repeated several times to get layers of colours. It's a time consuming and exacting technique with bold geometric results.

In Bhuj, clamp dye techniques came into practice around 35 years ago. During that time, clamp dyeing techniques were used on traditional lungis (sarongs) to produce various designs. This was a short-lived trend, however and the technique went out of use after some 5 years. The Khatri brothers re-introduced the process in Bhuj and now create some of the finest itajime, clamp-dyed textiles in India.

Any variations or irregularities are part of the design and inherent to the production process.