On National Handloom Day, Ministry of Textiles and FDCI launch a virtual campaign to promote Indian handloom and weavers

The celebrations for the sixth National Handloom Day have gone digital this year with the Ministry of Textiles and Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) launching a week-long campaign to highlight and support the work of weavers, ‘the quiet warriors', who have suffered the most with the fashion industry taking a hit due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The virtual campaign was launched on National Handloom Day (August 7) on social media with an announcement by the Ministry of Textiles. Textiles Minister Smriti Irani tweeted on Friday morning, “7 August - National Handloom Day, is the day to commemorate India’s rich & diverse handloom and acknowledge contribution of weavers in conserving our heritage. Let us root for #Vocal4Handmade to celebrate our handloom legacy & support the clarion call of ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’.”

The campaign aims at celebrating the rich heritage of Indian handloom and promoting weavers and their work. Sunil Sethi, Chairman, FDCI, says, “Promoting handloom and working hand in hand with weavers has been a continuous process for us. Our designers have been coming up with ideas on how to support and work in collaboration with more weavers. Before being a part of this campaign to promote #Vocal4Handmade, we came up with 'Celebrate the Maker', a social media campaign to keep the conversation and discussions active around the most important asset that we have to preserve and have to work to promote - handloom and weavers We will continue our efforts in this direction and in the proposed fashion week in the future, we plan to have a handloom show, something which has been part of our fashion weeks even in the past.”
Sethi also shares that to support the weavers, FDCI is also opening the third tranche of COVID-19 Support Fund (CSF) to provide financial assistance to the weavers by buying unsold stocks from them. The weavers will be identified by the DC Handlooms, under the Ministry of Textiles. “The first tranche of CSF was for our designers, second was for designers who are not with FDCI and the third will be dedicated to weavers,” he says.