It has taken research, development of design and painstaking experimentation to arrive at a Taatini.

‘Taatini,’ which also means ‘woman weaver’ in Assamese, honours the weavers who used to live in every home in the Northeast by enhancing their time-honoured motifs, reimagining them into the new and unexpected.

The founders of Taatini, sisters, Preeti Bhutani and Moumi Moola, have spent four years exploring weaving hubs as far apart as Hubli and Lakhimpur, Guwahati and Benares. They were looking to find intricate, classic tribal motifs.

They then looked at handicraft techniques from all over the country. They made the handloom, from different parts of India, central to their design concepts.
Finally, they thoroughly researched and understood silk, so that the yarn in a Taatini is unique and irreplaceable. They have then innovated with all these elements, using a modern, minimalistic design language and sensibility.

Just as women are proud to claim that they own a ‘Banaras’ or a ‘Paithani’ you can be proud to own a ‘Taatini.’

Preeti, the designer behind Taatini, gets her design sensibility from a very personal space. Earlier, every household in Assam had a handloom, and so did her paternal grandmother. A lady used to come in and weave gamusas, a cloth used during the puja’s or Bihu in Assam. Surprisingly, the sisters’ grandmother didn’t know how to weave, but she was way ahead of her time with a sense of understated style, design and an eye for blending different types of fabric. However, Preeti’s grand-aunt, whom she called ‘Atuma,’ used to weave beautifully. Preeti shared a special bond with Atu, and soaked up her love for and titbits about weaving. As far back as she can remember, she was fascinated with the loom and that repetitive ‘khatakhat khatakhat’ sound.

Preeti went on to graduate in textile design from Delhi. She then earned her masters in textile weaving from The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Subsequently, she designed for brands such as Zara Home, various manufacturers in the home furnishing export industry and textiles fairs like the Heimtextil in Germany. However, she never lost her love for the classic weaves she had learnt as a child. Preeti brings to her sarees a unique combination of a knowledge of the Northeast and South India, her training from NIFT, topped off by the sophistication of European aesthetics and techniques.

Moumi is an Honours Graduate in Psychology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Characterized by her warmth and compassion, she has worked with urban poor communities in Bangalore. She has worked with underprivileged children and helped in developing programmes for school children to bring awareness of India’s history and the current problems the country faces today. On her regular visits to Assam, she was dismayed to discover that 220 registered tribes, communities of weavers, in the North-east are gradually vanishing due to migration and urbanisation. Each one is unique and each has its own weave and can be identified by it. Feeling that these weaves are actually cultural artefacts Preeti and Moumi founded Taatini to help the region grow economically, while sustaining the art of weaving that is an intrinsic and vital part of every Northeastern household, but is now slowly disappearing.