Sari-inspired dress

What is Sari-inspired dress?

A sari-inspired dress is a Western garment, most often a gown or a dress, that takes something from the Indian sari and carries it into sewn clothing. What it borrows can be the fall and crossing of the cloth, the ornament, or the colour. Designers in Europe and America have made such pieces for more than a century. Chiffon, silk chiffon and crêpe turn up again and again, and beads, diamante, embroidery and lace do the work a sari's woven border would do. The wearers in the sources are public figures, not ordinary shoppers, and the setting is nearly always a formal one.

Where does Sari-inspired dress come from?

The earliest trace in the sources is a silent film of 1917, The Gown of Destiny, where such a dress appears on screen. In the late 1930s Elsa Schiaparelli designed pieces of this kind, with Princess Karam in mind, and that work is said to have led two other designers, Christian Bérard and Nada Patcevitch, to a black crêpe dress finished in gilt leather. The idea returned in force after Jacqueline Kennedy's 1962 tour of India and Pakistan, when she carried saris home intending to have them remade. Interest flared, then cooled, though designers kept coming back. Gianni Versace later said the black dress Elizabeth Hurley wore in 1994 had grown out of the sari.

How is Sari-inspired dress made?

There is no single method. The sources describe cloth cut and sewn, then decorated by hand: porcelain beads and diamante on one dress, gilt leather on another, gold lace at the hem of a third, colour-changing LEDs on a fourth. A design can begin with a photograph. The pink chiffon dress Oleg Cassini made for Jacqueline Kennedy followed a picture Howell Conant had taken a year earlier of Audrey Hepburn in a yellow chiffon dress of the same kind. In 2010 Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton built a line from vintage Indian saris. The sources give no timings and do not describe the tailoring in detail.

Colours, motifs and borders

The aim is the sari's look carried into a dress: soft cloth, ornament, strong colour. Named in the sources are pink chiffon, fuchsia and violet silk chiffon, a black gown with a gold lace border, a black and gold gown, a white gown with volume, mint green, yellow, a turquoise and gold suit with a red and gold dress beside it. Trimming ranges from beads and diamante to embroidery, lace and small lights that change colour. Shapes vary as widely: close to the figure, full and long, bare at one shoulder, or cut like a tuxedo.

How Sari-inspired dress is worn

A sari-inspired dress goes on like any other dress. Nothing is wrapped, pleated or tucked. What survives from the sari is the way cloth falls and crosses the body. One version leaves a shoulder bare, another is cut close to the figure, another falls long and full. The sources mention a full-length gown, a figure-hugging gown and a tuxedo cut in the sari's spirit. Length and line depend on the designer rather than on a rule, and no blouse piece or petticoat is described with them.

When Sari-inspired dress is worn

These dresses belong to formal, public moments. The sources place them at a museum exhibition opening, a state dinner, the Academy Awards, a red carpet and a fashion awards night, and one serves as a costume in a film. They are not daily wear. The people seen in them are public figures: a first lady, a princess, film actors, a presenter. Wearing one can signal an interest in India, or simply borrow the sari's line without putting on a sari.

Styles of Sari-inspired dress

The category is loose. Some pieces are gowns with a sari-like drape, some are dresses cut from old saris, some come as two-piece suits. Across the sources there are a sari-gown set with LEDs, a one-shouldered Oscar dress, a tuxedo reworked in the sari's spirit, and a line made from vintage saris. Designers named include Elsa Schiaparelli, Wesley Tann, Oleg Cassini, Alexander McQueen, Valentino, Armani, Marchesa and Jean Paul Gaultier, among others. No standard pattern exists, and a sewn dress raises none of the handloom or powerloom questions a woven sari does.

What Sari-inspired dress means

The dress shows how far the sari travels. It turns up in Hollywood and European fashion, on first ladies and film stars, and in the fashion press: in 1996 the magazine Elle gathered Eastern-influenced outfits, called them best without added ornament, and printed a picture of a woman running her hand down a long embroidered black chiffon gown with gold lace at the hem. Designers have used the idea both as a nod to India and as a source of shape, and one house turned old saris into new dresses. Versace traced a famous black dress of the 1990s back to the sari.

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