Recycled silk
Meanwhile, Delhi-based operation Vijay Enterprises says its range of recycled silk offerings is becoming a much more important part of its business as retailers demand more eco-friendly high-end materials. It was exhibiting at Texworld for the very first time.
Vijay’s product development Vaibhav Ahlawat manager explained, “We collect silk scraps from hundreds of small textile mills from all over India, these are then broken down and hand-woven by villagers into new, luxury, recycled silks.”
The company says this is a ‘cluster-based operation’ where workers get fairly paid. Silk yarn is supplied by Vijay to the cluster villagers that are used to weave together the yarns made from scrap silk. These are then skillfully selected and sorted by hand according to its customers’ design requirements.
“We specialise in supplying peace silk yarn to weave these recycled fabrics,” said Ahlawat, “this means insects are not killed as in the traditional method of silk harvesting. However, using this method we can only get around two to three metres of silk thread from each silk cocoon as opposed to the hundreds of metres which is harvested in traditional way. That’s why peace silk is so expensive.”
The company also uses a large variety of silks such as Tussah and blends with cotton and these fabrics are often vegetable dyed in what is a largely artisanal operation. “But because we literally have thousands of weavers and collectors at our disposal, recycled silk volumes are scalable and large commercial scale orders can be fulfilled,” he said.
