The saree is the most beautiful piece of garment you can drape on your body, and Himanshu Verma, AKA the Saree Man, has been wearing it for the last 12 years to reclaim its gender fluidity. He has been organising the Saree Festival every year since 2014, where he curates contemporary as well as traditional weaves. He believes the saree needs to be celebrated and his fascination grew through the course of his curatorial work on sarees.
He doesn’t consider draping saree to be a feminine piece of clothing and has an ardent love for the traditional handloom saree over the blingy ones. He further added that saree is a 150 year old garment which was called as thakurbani drape and it was generally worn by the Tagore ladies. He started wearing sarees as way to re-appropriate the garment which he feels is not only tailored for women alone. In fact, saree and dhoti were worn by men in most parts of the country ages back but today, the two have been demarcated with a gender specific role.
Sarees unfold the beauty of a plain simple body which gradually flaunts the curves.
Himanshu Verma is on a revolutionary spree to highlight the historical traditions where it was all about the fluidity of drape and not about the structure of gender roles.
We think he cuts an elegant picture in saree.