Sari-inspired dress

What is Sari-inspired dress?

A sari-inspired dress is a Western garment that takes cues from the Indian sari. Designers copy the way the cloth falls, the way it is trimmed and the colours it uses. The result can be a slim full-length gown, a suit or an everyday dress. Some cover one shoulder and leave the other bare, the way a sari's end crosses the body. Houses such as Dolce and Gabbana, Valentino, Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton and Alexander McQueen have all made versions, along with Catherine Walker and, earlier, Oleg Cassini and Wesley Tann. Actresses and public figures wear them to openings, dinners and award ceremonies.

Where does Sari-inspired dress come from?

The form is not new. A sari-inspired dress can be seen in a silent film of 1917, The Gown of Destiny, where a wife's appearance in one changes her husband's mind. In the late 1930s Elsa Schiaparelli worked on sari-based designs after being inspired by Princess Karam. The idea spread much further after Jacqueline Kennedy toured India and Pakistan in 1962 and came home with saris she meant to have remade as dresses. For a while designers followed her lead, and the dress has returned in waves since, on European runways and on red carpets.

How is Sari-inspired dress made?

These are sewn dresses rather than woven saris. Chiffon appears again and again, silk chiffon in particular, and one example was made of crêpe. Trimming is added by hand or in a couture workroom: porcelain beads, diamante, gilt leather, gold lace, embroidery. Cassini's dress for Kennedy was pink chiffon trimmed with beads and diamante, and he took its shape from a photograph of a yellow chiffon dress Audrey Hepburn had worn a year earlier. Wesley Tann worked with real saris, producing a turquoise and gold suit in the Chanel manner and a two-piece red and gold dress. Later, Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton used old Indian saris for one collection.

Colours, motifs and borders

Colour is part of the borrowing. Light pink, mint green, turquoise with gold, red with gold, white, violet with fuchsia and plain black all turn up in the sources. Some dresses are covered in surface work: beads, diamante, embroidery, a gold lace hem. One black chiffon gown was embroidered and finished with gold lace. Others rely on cut alone, with a single shoulder left bare and the fabric drawn across the body like a sari's end. The look runs from simple day dresses to full evening gowns.

How Sari-inspired dress is worn

These dresses go on the way any dress does, in one piece. The sari shows up in the cut: cloth drawn over one shoulder and pinned, or a single panel sweeping from shoulder to hem. Lengths run from short to floor-length, and shapes from close-fitting to full. Because it is stitched, nothing has to be pleated or tucked afresh each time. Underneath, ordinary dress underclothes are enough, and no separate blouse or petticoat is needed the way a wrapped sari needs them.

When Sari-inspired dress is worn

These dresses belong to formal and celebratory settings. Kennedy wore hers at a 1963 Washington exhibition of the Mona Lisa, and again at a state dinner honouring India's president. The Princess of Wales wore one to meet the King of Thailand. Film awards, red carpets and fashion ceremonies have all seen them. On screen in 1917 one played a part in a domestic drama. In the sources they are not everyday wear; the settings are dinners, galas, premieres and prize nights.

Styles of Sari-inspired dress

Designers have taken the idea in many directions. There are sari-styled dresses with one bare shoulder, a sari-inspired tuxedo, and gowns set with light-emitting diodes that change colour. Some versions are built from a single sari; others use new cloth and only echo the drape. A black Versace dress of 1994 is said by the house to have grown out of the sari. The sources give no rule for what qualifies, so the label stretches from a light day dress to a sculpted red-carpet gown.

What Sari-inspired dress means

The sari-inspired dress shows how a South Asian garment travels. Fashion houses in Europe and America have drawn on it, magazines have praised it, and famous wearers have kept it in view. In 1996 Elle printed a picture of a woman stroking her embroidered black chiffon gown and described such clothes as looking best with nothing added. Beyond fashion, the dress carries a soft memory of the sari itself: the drape and the border and the colour are borrowed, while the cloth and the loom are not.

Questions people ask about Sari-inspired dress

Good reading and sources

• Freida Pinto flaunts toned body in sari-inspired gownHindustan Times, Article

• Sari-inspired dress on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data