Kanchipuram
Three-shuttle korvai silk with contrast borders, woven on pit looms. Eleven weeks for a bridal piece is normal here.
Six generations of looms, one honest price.
A saree should carry the name of the person who made it.
Ojasvi Drapes began at a single loom in Kanchipuram, with a frustration that would not go away: the weaver who had spent six months on a saree was seeing a fraction of what it sold for in a city showroom. So we started buying directly, paying upfront, and putting the weaver's name on the label.
It means a person sat at a loom and threw a shuttle by hand, thousands of times, for weeks. It means the selvedge is slightly uneven, the dye lot varies a little from the last one, and no two pieces are quite identical.
Those are not flaws to apologise for. They are the difference between cloth that was made and cloth that was manufactured — and they are the reason a good saree outlives the person who bought it.
We work with the same families year after year, in the towns their craft is named after.
Three-shuttle korvai silk with contrast borders, woven on pit looms. Eleven weeks for a bridal piece is normal here.
Katan silk with real zari butis, jangla and shikargah patterns drawn on graph paper before a single thread is thrown.
Double ikat, where the yarn is tie-dyed before weaving so the pattern appears as the cloth is made, not after.
Feather-light cotton-silk with a glassy transparency that comes from never degumming the yarn.
Tussar silk in its natural gold, spun from cocoons collected after the moth has already left.
Bandhani tied by hand, thousands of knots per saree, each one a fingertip pinch of cloth and a length of thread.
A saree usually passes through an agent, a wholesaler and a retailer before it reaches you. Each one takes a margin, and the weaver — the only person who actually made anything — takes the smallest one.
We buy at the loom and sell to you. The weaver earns several times more per piece, and you pay less than you would in a showroom for the same cloth. Nobody has to lose for that maths to work; there were simply too many hands in the middle.
We buy straight from weaver families and pay upfront, before a piece is sold. No agents, no consignment, no waiting ninety days to be paid for three months of work.
Pure silk carries a Silk Mark or Handloom Mark. Where a piece is blended, powerloom, or uses tested rather than pure zari, the product page says so in plain words.
Free fall and pico stitching on silk sarees, and blouse pieces cut with a generous margin so your tailor has room to work with.
A cotton pouch, a card naming the weaver, and a note on how to care for the cloth — because it should last decades, not seasons.
Two or three trips a year to each weaving town. We see the looms, meet the families, and choose pieces in person rather than from a catalogue.
The weaver is paid when we take the cloth, at a price agreed with them. That is the whole reason this business exists.
Each saree is opened, measured, checked against the light for pulls, and photographed in daylight with no colour correction.
Fall and pico where it is needed, pressed, folded in muslin, and packed with the weaver's card tucked inside.
Dispatched within two days, tracked the whole way, and returnable for a week if it is not what you hoped for.
Every piece on the site was chosen in person, from a loom we have stood beside. Have a look.