This festival season, saree lovers can proudly wear sustainability quotient on their sleeves, as they make a style statement with exotic collections of hand-woven Kanchipuram silk sarees. RmKV Silks, a leading silk saree retail brand, has come out with yet another innovation — RmKV Naturals — a collection of handwoven Kanchipuram silk sarees that has been created using 100 per cent pure natural dyes. 

“Over the past 30 years, RmKV has been consistently bringing new innovations and launching them around the Diwali season. Our innovations are classified under design, colour and fabric. This year we have come up with two more new innovations and RmKV Naturals is one of them,” said Shankar Kumaraswamy, Director, RmKV Silks, while unveiling the brand’s latest innovations here on Wednesday. 

Founded in 1924 by Rm.K.Visvanatha Pillai in the small business town of Tirunelveli, RmKV is today a household name when it comes to wedding silk sarees. The brand has showrooms spread across Chennai, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and Bengaluru. 

RmKV is well-known for its pioneering innovations in handwoven Kanchipuram Silk Sarees. Some of its iconic innovations include Hamsa Damayanti (hand-woven silk sarees inspired by artist Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings), silk sarees with 50,000 rare colours, and shades and grand reversible silk sarees to name a few. 

Shankar Kumaraswamy said natural dyes were part of Indian tradition till 1856, when convenient and cost-effective synthetic dyes replaced them. “But, synthetic dyes have an environmental impact due to toxic effluents. Through this innovation, we are bringing back our lost tradition and also to doing  our bit to protect the planet,” he added. 

The Naturals collection features sarees in rich red and amber tones derived from manjishta (Indian madder) and arraku (lac), and has been used to create deep crimson colours, while indigo has been processed and curated to create blue shades. Fenugreek, myrobalan, red soil, pomegranate shells, mulberry leaves and marigold flowers are just a few of the other natural ingredients that have been used to create the natural dyes. 

K Sivakumar, MD, RmKV Silks, said after a decade of research, RmKV Silks R&D centre in Tamil Nadu has rediscovered the recipes for dozens of natural dyes, and also innovated a few special colours of our own. He added that currently there are 45 shades of natural colours available and RmKV is working on increasing them further.

RmKV Naturals range of silk sarees will be priced between ₹15,000-30,000. 

Light silk sarees

RmKV Silks also announced Lino Silk Sarees, which are 40 per cent lighter than the regular silk sarees. The sarees are made using two patented techniques: KV technique and Lino technique. 

Pranav Kumaraswamy, Director, RmKV Silks, said the collection of light weight silk sarees was created with the younger generation of customers in mind. “The lightness of these Kanchipuram silk sarees will be complemented by bright colours and bold patterns,” he added. 

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