The Hindu Business Line : Designing by the bagful

Meet Geeta Kothari, who designs evening bags to co-ordinate with or complement evening wear and retails her brand, Majestique, through upscale stores in India and also in Hong Kong.

Ever walked into a party and envied all the gorgeously dressed women who seem to be carrying just those perfect little evening bags that you never know where to look for? In all probability, those sexy little numbers in black, dazzling gold or silver, with the quaintest handles and frames have been made by Puneiite Geeta Kothari, who has found her calling in designing these bags by the... bagful!

The 40-something mother of two is a teacher in special education by training, and put in a few years at Mumbai's Sadhana school for children with special needs, but had to give up when the family shifted base to Pune. It was here, she says, that she finally started getting serious about her passion for many years; designing evening bags to co-ordinate with or complement the clothes of the glitterati. "As a child, I picked up the skill from my mother who has a beautiful sense of colour and would spend days putting together things for the family out of old fabrics, discarded frames from ancient purses or just about anything that nobody else had any," she recalls. But it was the bags that she put together for Geeta's trousseau that fired her imagination, and she decided to follow in her mother's footsteps.

Geeta Kothari

Today, Geeta is an established name in a business, which keeps her on her toes most days of the year. "Once I get the raw material for the bags, the rest just falls into place when I sit down after dinner doodling over possible designs and working out colour schemes," she says.

While getting hold of the raw material sounds easy, it is this part that involves much of the hard work. For Geeta, it means scouring the by-lanes of juna bazaars, flea markets wherever in the world she goes, looking for castaway old frames from either old bags or anything that can be fashioned into a frame for a bag. In addition to this, she also has a network of antique dealers who now know her requirements and personally deliver pieces when they get hold of some beauties. She also picks up antique buttons, semi-precious stones such as Topaz and Tigers eye or just about anything that adds beauty to her products during her various trips to the market.

Working with a team of karigars based out of Mumbai, she fashions bags made of raw silk, tanchoi, tussar, exquisite jamewars and crushed gold, depending on what occasion the client needs the bag for. Other traditional arts are used to embellish the bags — intricate hand embroidery, beadwork and even the art of jadaau — and fashion the final product, which is sold under the brand name Majestique. The bags, themselves, are of many kinds — old world batwas in silk that are the rage today, tiny occasional bags that can be tucked elegantly under the arm or the more formal bags with elaborate work on the frame and the body to complement a more formal evening. "It takes between 8-15 days for just one bag depending on the amount of work the karigar has to put in, and I manage to make around 350 bags every month," says Geeta.

While at one point she harboured ambitions of setting up her own exclusive studio, she has now given up that idea since the effort involved in running such a place would take away the joy of being at home with the family.

Majestique, incidentally, is retailed at upscale Mumbai stores such as Eternia, Sheetal, Benzer and StudioS, in addition to a large boutique in Hong Kong whose populace just love the beauty of traditional Indian craftsmanship.

Geeta will also be holding an exhibition of her bags in Singapore's best-known boutique, which has a huge fan following amongst the well-heeled Indians living there. "This is just the beginning for me. Now that the kids are grown up, they are able to take a critical look at my work. I intend to retail the bags in more locations and as many countries as I can possibly handle", she signs off.

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