How Tarun Tahiliani and ABFRL’s new menswear label, Tasva, promises to revolutionise the fast-growing men’s ethnic wear market
Prayers are answered in Benaras, and souls liberated on its ghats. I’m not sure if couturier Tarun Tahiliani had this in mind when planning to launch his premium men’s label, Tasva — his first salvo with Aditya Birla Fashion Retail Ltd (ABFRL) that acquired a stake in Tahiliani’s business in February this year. At the fabled Brijrama Palace — originally built for the Maharaja of Darbhanga in the early 19th century — models dressed in finely-fashioned ethnic wear mingled with guests and members of the press in the early afternoon glow. The clothes they wore carried all the hallmarks of Tahiliani’s attention to detail, drape, and design.
“The kurtas begin at ₹1,599,” said Tahiliani, sinking into a couch on the terrace overlooking the Ganga. In my personal conversations with him over the past few years, he had often talked about a well-priced and accessible label. Tasva, launched a few months after the ABFRL deal, then, makes sense. “It is the right time; I want Indian men to be able to dress well in clothes that are made in India with Indian textiles, clothes that are comfortable and make them look good.”
Designs from Tasva
Separately, I asked Ashish Dikshit, ABFRL’s managing director, if this label intended to cater to the rapidly growing (and marrying) young population of India. Dikshit immediately outlined the brand’s strategy: “We’re looking at opening 70 stores across the country in 2022 alone.” Over our conversation, I find that the soft-spoken Dikshit is serious about, and committed to, the cause. “At Aditya Birla, we’ve been in the business of clothes for a long time. We recognised the opportunity and wanted to take Tarun’s design and fashion sensibility to the country in a big way.”
By the hand and powerloom
As the afternoon progressed and the models changed and came back to mingle with us, they wore a variety of textiles ranging from khadi to machine-woven jacquards, cotton slub to viscose-infused staple, cotton velvet to silk kataan. To me, this is where the soul of Tasva lies: in embracing and innovating with the kind of textiles being produced in a historic place like Benaras today, and not just a venerated fantasy of what Benarasi textiles should be.
Tarun Tahiliani at Tasva’s launch
Tahiliani has embraced both the hand and powerloom, and worked with the weavers to ensure the kind of supply, and price points, that wouldn’t be possible had everything been handwoven or hand-embroidered. Many Tasva designs use hand-made fabrics, but not all. This direct form of collaboration and design intervention also sets Tasva apart and above the label’s closest competitors — Fabindia and Manyavar, two labels that own the lion’s share of the men’s ethnic wear market in India.
At the studio of award-winning textile artist Vakil Ahmed, we meet his son, Salman, an English-speaking Delhi University graduate who came back to his family business and helped to modernise it. He was proud to show us around his various weaving facilities: one of them in his ancestral maternal haveli where artisans sit on handlooms producing fine Benarasi brocade taking days, and another, a mechanized affair where humongous powerlooms churn out textiles at the rate of tens of meters every few hours. Along with Ahmed and Salman, and many like them, Tahiliani has accepted and decided to work with the reality of what Benaras is today: a hybrid creature of the past and present, living simultaneously in both timelines.
Textiles range from khadi to machine-woven jacquards, cotton slub to viscose-infused staple, cotton velvet to silk kataan
Design led
In connecting with the real Benaras through Tasva, Tahiliani has freed the tormented soul of ethnic wear design that, till now, was held captive in the snobbish diktat that anything ‘ethnic’ has to be made with handwoven cloth and embellished with hand-embroideries only. On the flip side, hundreds of labels big and small ride on the ‘ethnic’ bandwagon without so much as a nod to the work of master craftspeople working in textile centres like Benaras, using cheap materials to offer low prices. Tahiliani’s approach is as fresh as it is needed.
Models showcase Tasva on the ghats
Scale and finish
- According to Dikshit, the seeds of the brand were sown in 2018-19, when the company began putting together a design team to create a homegrown label that would answer to the increasing demand for Indian and Indo-Western designs. “And then we met Tarun,” he said, with the finality of an answer that’s known to be correct. “When we began working with him, we brought in our scale and our industrial engineering, and showed him what was possible… how his idea of perfection, finish, design, and style need not always come at couture prices.”
I asked him how it all began. “ABFRL had been looking for someone to get into this category, and decided that they’d be better off working with an owner-designer who could bring in a consistent point of view. If I’m doing it, I would do it while fully embracing new technologies and techniques.” His 25 years in fashion, he added, have taught him to look at clothes as representations of the times in which they are made, and as vehicles for change and expression.
Later that evening, on a boat ride to take in the spectacle of the aarti on the ghats, I mused on the resilience of Benaras —a centre of both spiritual and fiscal pursuits housing temples and traders in equal numbers — and how Tahiliani is perhaps best placed to access this metaphor through fashion and design. A men’s label in a market that’s thirsting for well-designed solutions for a people who have always loved and understood good fabrics, comfort, and style, and who have been stuck with a Bollywood fantasy promoted by its biggest stars — not on the strength of design, but by outmoded ad campaigns that sell a dream. On the ghats of Benaras, Tarun Tahiliani has perhaps answered that prayer. The year 2022 will tell us how well he and ABFRL have answered it.
Kurtas from ₹1,599, and
banghgalas and sherwanis from ₹12,999, on tasva.com.
