Indian Woman's Traditional Wrap Cloth: "Saree"

This is a "saree." The saree is an unstitched rectangular piece of fabric worn by women in the Indian sub-continent, including Sri-Lanka. The length of a saree varies from 15 feet for an average woman to 18 feet for a high-caste woman. Its width is about three feet. The fabric is draped around the entire body. The most common style of wearing a saree is by wrapping one end of the saree around the waist with pleats in front and pinning the neatly folded other end on the left shoulder over the blouse. However, women in different parts of India wear saree in their own traditional style.

Sarees are woven with one plain end that is concealed by the wrap, two long decorative borders running the length of the saree, and a one to three foot section at the other end which continues and elaborates the length-wise decoration. This end is called the pallu; it is the part draped over the shoulder.

In past times, sarees were woven of silk or cotton. The rich could afford finely-woven, diaphanous silk sarees. More expensive sarees had elaborate geometric, floral, or figurative ornament created on the loom, as part of the fabric. For fancy sarees, patterns could be woven with gold or silver thread, which is called zari work. Sometimes the saris were further decorated, after weaving, with various sorts of embroidery. Zardozi embroidery uses gold and silver thread and sometimes pearls and precious stones.

The poor wore coarsely woven cotton sarees. Simple hand-woven villagers' sarees were often decorated with checks or stripes woven into the cloth. Inexpensive sarees were also decorated with block printing using carved wooden blocks and vegetable dyes.


Source:
http://www.prokerala.com/kerala/how-to-wear-saree/