On the trail of French chiffon in Dubai

Gold shopping apart, Dubai has long been the place for ladies searching for chiffon. Khaleej Times visits three of the most well-known stores for chiffon saris to learn the trends behind this delicate and much-desired fabric

Rivoli, Regal and Ratti. Names of these three shops crop up repeatedly when you ask a cross section of women in Dubai where they buy their chiffon saris. These women are all expats, wives of businessmen from Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Karachi and London. Some are businesswomen themselves.

They frequently travel, and buy chiffon saris for friends and relatives in either south Asia or America. Some have lived in Dubai for over 20 years and will swear by only one of those three shops and tell you to stay clear of the “dubious maal (stuff)” in shops along Satwa. Others say buying chiffon depends on your taste, how much you want to spend, how important ‘genuine’ is to you, and your equation with the shop people and your faith in their shop.

Sales person Kamlesh Kumar shows a hand-painted French chiffon at Regal in Mina Bazar, Dubai, and (right) Kumar of Rivoli shows a branded chiffon sari material. — KT photos by Nivriti Butalia

Grey-haired Sharma at the Regal showroom in Mina Bazaar has been in the business for 35 years. He’s been watching the shop floor ever since Dubai started growing, and he pegs that to 1975.

“Our number one selling item is French Chiffon,” he says, explaining with pride how they go to France themselves and source this wispy, diaphanous fabric, suggest design and colour tones to the manufacturers as they know their customer’s taste, what sells in Dubai, and what women tourists take back to their home countries. Sometimes they place orders for a mere 25 metres (or approximately five saris) of a very specific embellishment and fabric density. Prints and fabrics that work in France — those $200 headscarves — are not what works here for saris.

But in this day and age, are people still buying chiffon in the quantities they used to? Sharma says with some direct sadness, no, sari sales over the years have come down. The young mostly don’t buy saris, he says. It’s an after-marriage phenomenon. Nowadays even 55- to 60-year-old women, Sharma says, those who used to wear saris — and we’re not just talking about chiffon now — are seen about in leggings and kurtas.

Trends have changed. Time has passed. But the loyalists, he says, are still around. There are women who will always prefer a sari to a salwar kameez. And there will always be those sari lovers — price no matter — for whom the possession of a French Chiffon remains eternally desirable.

Faking it?

Sharma says with pride that they aren’t one of those shops that pass off Japanese/Korean or Singaporean fabric as French chiffon. “Jinko pehchan hoti hai (Those who can tell)…” he says.

But how can you tell? Sharma instructs his salesperson with 12 years’ experience, Kamlesh Kumar, to explain the difference in textures, the fall of a fabric, the fluidity of the drape. The variety is astounding. As are the prices, anything upwards of Dh350 for a plain ‘French chiffon’. These plain one-tone chiffons — perhaps the most versatile — are easily the most affordable of the lot, but there are numerous variables. Plain doesn’t mean cheap.

Then come the exquisite hand-painted ones, two-tone chiffons, the ones with Swarovski stoning work, the metallic ones, the 36-gram ones and the ones weighing 40 grams. There are also varieties called Ombre, Opal, Jacquard, Metallic, and ‘film cut’. They have chiffon with velvet, flocking, and changeant chiffon. The types are understood best by playing with them in your hand and physically getting a sense of, sometimes, very subtle differences in fabric. Nobody can fault the store for being under stocked.

Sharma says some of his best repeat customers are the Marwari ladies, of business houses in Mumbai and Chennai, who have “subdued or subtle taste”. The shop has to cater to a wider audience, of course. Nobody can say also that the stock of all those hundreds of yards of chiffon are ‘subdued’. In more cases than not, subtle is a concept long put to sleep.

Budget chiffons

Pamela Singh, wife of a tea planter in Jorhat in northeastern Indian state of Assam, has been frequenting Ratti for Chantilly lace pieces and French chiffons for over a decade. “I’m in Dubai once or twice a year, and at least one of those times, I make a visit to Ratti to see if they have anything new. I feel Bharat (Bharat Rawtani of Ratti) keeps a good stock and their stuff is not over priced like some of the other places. I’ve been going to him for years. I usually end up spending 500-800 dirhams on a chiffon sari I like and that I know I won’t get in Delhi or Mumbai.”

Singh says she’s been trying to get her daughters to see some of the materials if they like anything, “but their tastes and fashions are very… different. You know how fussy daughters can be.”

Salesperson at Ratti for eight years, Vipin Aruniwas Harshan unfurls a sample of digital satin chiffon for Dh140 per metre. Jacquard chiffon for as much, but he says their most popular has been a copper-tinged chiffon for Dh45 per metre.

Harshan doesn’t hesitate either to lay on the counter rainbow chiffons and velvet chiffons, chiffons with lurex threads and metallic threads, brasso chiffon and opal chiffons. From Dh40 per metre to Dh140 per metre, Ratti’s ethic seems to be: retain interests and business of the budget shopper.

nivriti@khaleejtimes.com

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