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Khaleej Times

Dubai-based Indian expat Vino Supraja's sustainable fashion Inspired by ancient art

'You can't go home again' — goes the expression popularised by American author Thomas Wolfe's eponymous novel. When we return to a place from the past it's never the same as we remember it. Things change, people move on, places evolve, and life takes a trajectory of its own so that childhood remembrances can never be relived fully. But for 45-year-old architect-turned-fashion designer and entrepreneur Vino Supraja, whose label takes her name too, the past seems to have somehow stayed suspended in time, awaiting her return, to give it a new lease on life. Retracing her memories of watching an ancient theatrical art form under the incandescent light of petromax lamps as a six-year-old in a small town in Tamil Nadu, India led to a fashion collection for connoisseurs of woven stories from as far as Japan and the UK. The story of reconnection begins where one ends. 'I originally belong to a very small town called Vandavasi in Tamil Nadu, and I am an architect by education. I worked for radio and television in Chennai, India for five years as a host, radio jockey, and a producer, and after five years of having a career in media, I had to move to China in 2011 because of my husband's job,' she recalls. As she searched for media-related information, she found herself on one side of the chasm of language. 'The only website that was open in English was a fashion school, and that's how I ended up in the fashion field,' she says. To the runway Three years later, when she moved to Detroit, Supraja showcased her collections at Shanghai Fashion Week followed by Brooklyn Fashion Week in 2017. That same year, she moved to Dubai. In the city, known as a rapidly growing fashion capital, she saw the documentary The True Cost by Andrew Morgan a couple of years later as part of another fashion course she was taking, which opened her eyes to the plight of those in workhouses, who made clothes for fashion houses from around the world. And she made the decision to make every aspect of her label, which is currently available online in the UAE, ethical as well as sustainable. 'It [the documentary] hit me really hard, because it's about how garment-making employees are being treated. I felt very bad that I belong to an industry which was causing so much damage to livelihoods and also to Earth. So, I consciously shifted my path to become a sustainable fashion designer, and I came up with my brand as a sustainable fashion brand,' she says. And so she went on a backpacking trip to India to find the right group of weavers to work with, she says, adding: 'I found one in a village in Tamil Nadu. These are the people who still weave my fabric.' But then, Covid-19 happened, and she moved back to India. However, in 2022, Dubai came calling again. And in 2023, Purisai, one of her most successful collections inspired by her childhood was born. The origins for it lay in Therukoothu, an ancient theatrical folk art that is known for its rawness and vibrant colours. 'Therukoothu is something that I have seen since my childhood, because I was raised in a very small town. For us, television came very, very late into our lives. So the entertainment we had was ...attending weddings or sitting on rugs and watching Therukoothu. And when you are a child, seeing all these colours, dramatic head gear and those mirrors... This art form is from the really ancient days when there were no electric lights, they had lamps that used fire. The light that would shine would reflect on the mirrors and all the tassels would be jumping when the character was jumping. I used to be fascinated. I wanted to make a collection out of it, because it has so many elements like the face makeup and the costume as such. And you know, it was super inspiring. I think even if I was still practicing architecture I would have built a building inspired from that,' she laughs. The artform has since become a rarer thing to witness but recently found itself in the headlines when Therukoothu performer and teacher Purisai Kannappa Sambandan, whose family is one of the few credited with saving the art form from being forgotten, was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in India. Heartened by the weave's reach, Supraja has been roaming her homeland, looking for inspiration in the smallest of places, finding delicate crafts and traditions on the edge of extinction, to craft something unexpected out of the canvas that is cloth. According to the non-profit Isha Foundation, India is home to more than 136 unique weaves, and has 50 traditional folk and tribal arts. There are reams of inspiration for the wandering traveller with an observant eye. It is one such tradition that has made the Vino Supraja cut. 'The product has not been launched yet; I am planning to launch it in March this year. See, there is this little village called Bhavani, which specialises in Bhavani Jamakkalam, a type of rug. 'This type of rug was used during every occasion in Tamil Nadu,' she explains. People wouldn't like sitting on the floor during gatherings, she says, and so these rugs were used as cushioning. Nowadays nobody sits on the floor. 'So that art is literally dying, and that is a geotagged weaving technique. (When I visited) I could see that art is dying. There are, like, hundreds of looms with cobwebs, broken looms with lots of dust caking them, and you can see one old man who is 80-plus, showing all his ribs, still weaving. It is such a strong visual,' she says. Finding herself charmed by the ancient practice, she began to think long and hard about tweaking the use of the resulting cloth; why make rugs when people don't use them to sit on? Why not use the same method to craft other things — not only would it give the art form a new lease on life but also bring it to the forefront as the unique heritage of India that was almost forgotten. 'I am at the product development stage as of now. We are re-imagining that as luxury handbags, because those rugs have signature stripes which I thought can actually be placed at a par with the Gucci stripe,' she said. About her base in the Emirates, she has this to say, 'The UAE helped me because the market was open for sustainable brands, however big or small, and although Dubai is a big market where all the luxury brands play, a brand like mine also has space. The country is welcoming of homegrown brands. It offers that comfort of running a (seamless) business.' Time's dominion over space kind of guarantees that you can't go back into a memory — the path to success then lies in carrying the good times forward, in taking the old and with that cloth, weaving a new future.