Mekhela Silk Dress Material

Back ground

Mekhelais a traditional Assamese dress worn by women.

There are two main pieces of cloth that are draped around the body.

The bottom portion, draped from the waist downwards is called the mekhela. It is in the form of a very wide cylinder that is folded into pleats to fit around the waist and tucked in.

The top portion of a long length of cloth that has one end tucked into the upper portion of the Mekhela and the rest draped over and around the rest of the body. Invariably there is a blouse that is worn underneath the top half of the body.

Material Used

The product Muga mekhela is made of Muga silk, the queen of textile fibre, is a variety of wild silk geographically tagged to the state of Assam in India. The silk is famous for its extreme durability and has a natural yellowish-golden tint with a shimmering, glossy texture. It was previously reserved for the use of royalty.

Technique applied

Weavers used a simple technique to weave the fabric of plain design. To weave this fabric weaver used a fly shuttle frame loom with two head shafts with a drafting order of 1,2,1,2..... However to make the warp, the yarn was sized. And during weaving the pirn of weft yarn became damped with water to get better texture per picks per inch.

How to distinguish genuine Muga fabric

• Naturally rich hand woven golden colour which has the quality of appearing like spun gold Texture is glossy, Lustrous and sheen is enhanced due to its natural lustre.
• Durability is beyond life time, which is a known fact.
• As the fabric ages its golden lustre increases.
• Muga has resilience for any shape. According to preference it attain either a fine texture by simple dry ironing from a damp state or a crushed crepe look leaving it unironed. Washing the fabric frequently with a mild washing material does not harm the silk. In fact with every wash the quality of muga gets finer and softer.
• Moisture regain capacity is about 30%, which are better than other silks
• Experiments conducted on the ultra violet filtering properties of muga silk has proved that muga silk fabric absorbs 85.08% of the harmful ultra violet rays in sunlight. An excellent sunshield protection for the skin.

Source : India Handloom Brand