Textile Minister to launch Selfie with Handloom campaign

The newly-appointed Union Textile Minister Smriti Irani to boost the popularity of handloom made cloth and other articles which have failed to make a cut with the common man will be unveiling varied campaigns. As, at present, handloom-made cloth and other articles have been adopted popularly more by high-end fashion brands and designers only.

Irani would launch a comprehensive social media campaign, the theme of which has been titled as ‘Selfie-with-Handloom’, on Monday, August 1, with posts on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook. The campaign would culminate in the Prime Minister’s constituency Varanasi-home to millions of weavers- on August 7, the National Handloom Day.

As sources close to the minister said that Irani wants people of the country to click a selfie wearing one or the other handloom-made article and post it online on social networking sites. The central idea of this campaign is to make handloom articles cool and thus boost demand.

Also, one of the major misconceptions is to equate handloom cloths with Khadi which is not true. On the other hand, several handloom articles such as Benarasi sarees and brocade have been adopted by such global and hep fashion brands as DKNY etc. They want to create allegiance of people towards handloom.

Also an extensive sale of handloom would be launched on August 7 across all the major e-commerce platforms. In all 19 such platforms that have dedicated handloom sections, including behemoths such as Amazon and Snapdeal, have been roped in.

Ministry sources also added that a buyer-seller meet too would be held on the National Handloom Day. The Delhi Crafts Council (DCC) and the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) apart from FICCI have pledged their support to the move, apart from several high-end designers the names of which the ministry sources declined to divulge before the formal launch of the campaign.

The campaign is being supported by several state governments and individually by chief ministers.