Young Designers 2011

		Young Designers 2011
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Swati Bhartia | 4bhartia.swati@gmail.com

BH’RAT: Connecting threads of Kutch and Patan

Apparel Design and Merchandising | PGDPD
Guide: Sanjay Guria
Sponsor: SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre, Ahmedabad

Keywords
Summer collection
Folk embroideries
Revival
Contemporary

My diploma project was part of the product development for SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre (STFC), the commercial division of Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and also a step in the establishment of a full-fledged production planning process.

STFC acts as a bridge between the rural micro-level enterprise and the global market. STFC’s integrated marketing approach aims at capacity building, product development and exploring new markets. It includes research, data management, production-related services and networking with wider national and international markets.

I had to understand various aspects and functioning of the craft sector. It involved dealing with real-life client situations at a large craft organisation such as SEWA, which helps self-employed women artisans by organizing them into village-level groups and provides them the initial working capital. Inputs from the marketing, production and information and communication technology teams gave me valuable insights into this sector. I got the opportunity to develop a complete range of apparel, finalizing forecast, trends, colours and fabric and implementing them for the specified clientele. The intermediary products included contemporary motifs’ library, silhouettes and developing ‘innovation with embroideries’ workshops. The outcome of the project was a collection of summer women’s wear for 2011 that incorporated embroideries from Kachchh.

The project involved understanding the system of the organisation and the cause-effect phenomena within a system of product design. Work at the grassroots-level also sensitized me to the environment in which craft products are developed.