“How could making a sari with steel have ever been a business decision?” This is the loudest I have heard Rimzim Dadu, 36, a decidedly quiet and introverted designer exclaim. It is a reaction to my rather pointed question: Was the metallic sari (inarguably, the brand’s biggest selling piece) a business decision? At ₹1.2 lakh (approx) a pop, it is like buying art; and yet the brand sells hundreds of them a year.
“My team thought I was mad. First: It was technically unheard of. Second: Why? Finally, they figured, it was to be an experimental piece in that particular collection for magazine editorials,” she says. Introduced in 2016, the metal sari changed the face of Rimzim’s eponymous label, that is now celebrating its 15th anniversary. (For this unique sari, hair-thin strands of steel are hand assembled and sewn together over 120 hours to create a single piece.)
