Ethnic Textiles : Questions of Originality and Challenges in 21st Century

Indian textiles are rich in their traditional styles. Each style or technique has its unique traditional features. These features can be identified through various sensorial experiences like look, touch, smell, etc. Consumers, design practitioners, and other stakeholders rely on these features during identification of traditional or ethnic products. However, with globalisation, these features are getting altered due to influence of modernisation, change in customer profiles, advent of newer technologies and manufacturing processes. So, it is imperative to study and identify the embedded features of ethnic textile products for retention of the unique traditional signatures. This talk would like to initiate a discussion on the issues related to originality and challenges in identifying and retaining traditional signatures in ethnic textile in the 21st century.