The Craft
Six yards, one
karigar.
Every Draplo saree is dyed, embroidered and hand-finished by a single artisan in Jaipur. No assembly line. No machine cuts. No shortcuts.
We don't make sarees by the thousand. We make them one at a time, the way they've been made in these lanes for three hundred years.
From a quiet loom
to your shoulder.
The silk arrives raw.
Our mulberry silk comes from family-run reelers in Karnataka — the same houses that have supplied Jaipur's weavers for generations. We choose only the longest, smoothest filaments. No blends. No imitation. If the silk doesn't pass the karigar's hand, it doesn't pass at all.
It is washed, and then it is dyed.
Each saree is hand-dyed in small copper vats — no industrial drums, no chemical fixers. The dyer reads the colour by eye, against the afternoon light, and adjusts the bath grain by grain. Two sarees from the same drop will never be perfectly identical, and that is the point.
The base is woven.
Six yards on a pit loom, beaten by hand. A skilled weaver completes roughly one saree every four to six days. The slubs, the tiny irregularities you'll feel along the pallu — those are the loom's signature, not its flaw.
The border is drawn.
Before any embroidery, the border is traced in chalk by the master karigar — the same hand that will do the gold work. Every motif is placed by eye, balanced to the drape of the body, not the flat of the table. This is where each piece begins to belong to one person.
Then comes the gold.
Gota patti, zardozi, and fine resham — applied in the order the eye reads them. A reception border can take ten to fourteen days of seated work, the karigar bent close, the needle moving in millimetres. We do not sub-contract this stage. One saree, one karigar, beginning to end.
It rests. It is checked. Then it ships.
Every finished saree is steamed, folded into cotton muslin, and rested for forty-eight hours before final inspection. We check the fall, the colour, the metal-work tension. Only then does it leave the studio — straight from the karigar's hands, to the courier, to you.
A factory can make a thousand sarees in a day.
It will take a karigar a month to make one of ours.
What goes in,
and who puts it there.
Only what we'd wear ourselves.
Every input is sourced from a small handful of houses we've worked with for years. We pay above-market for the privilege.
- Pure mulberry silk — sourced from Karnataka, never blended.
- Natural & azo-free dyes — gentle on the silk, gentle on the dyer's hands.
- Real metallic threads for gota and zardozi work, never plastic substitutes.
- Hand-spun cotton for the inner falls and finishing.
Eleven karigars. One workshop.
Our karigars are paid by the piece — not by the hour, not by the metre — so the slow ones never get pushed and the fast ones never get cornered.
- One karigar per saree, from chalk to final stitch.
- Fair, fixed piece rates agreed in writing before the work begins.
- No sub-contracting of embroidery or finish work to outside lofts.
- Tea, lunch, and rest are part of the day, not a bargaining chip.
Slow to make.
Made to last.
A Draplo saree is built to be worn for a decade and passed on for another two. If you would like to commission a piece — or just visit the workshop the next time you're in Jaipur — write to us.
See The Collection →