The House of Angadi brings together Angadi Heritage, Angadi Galleria and Angadi Silks: three addresses for Kanjeevaram and Benarasi silk, the Advaya label, and the finest handcrafted luxury India makes.
Court weavers to royal families for six hundred years, the Angadi family has carried one conviction through the generations: a sari is not a garment. It is an inheritance.
In 2001, K. H. Radharaman, a Cornell-trained engineer and the house’s principal designer, returned to Bengaluru to give that inheritance a new home. Angadi Silks came first. Then the Advaya label, Angadi Galleria, and in 2019 the flagship, Angadi Heritage, a store the founder describes as a luxury destination for Indian luxury, at par with the great international houses.
Three addresses. One design philosophy he calls contemporary tradition.
Four floors on Ashoka Pillar Road: Kanjeevaram, regional textiles, ready-to-wear, perfume and menswear, set among Chettinad columns, Burmese panels and Chola bronzes. Winner of the UNESCO Prix Versailles, 2020.
On Sankey Road, the Advaya Heritage Series is shown by appointment. It was here that the Kanjeevarams for Deepika Padukone’s wedding and reception were conceived and woven.
The original Angadi silk house, trusted by Bengaluru families for wedding trousseaux and festive Kanjeevarams, and the foundation on which the House was built.
A Kanjeevaram takes weeks on a pit loom and generations of knowledge. Here is how one is born.
Mulberry silk
Three-ply, degummed and twisted for the weight that lets a Kanjeevaram fall the way it does.
Colour, matched by eye
Dyed in small vats to the house’s own shade cards: arakku, MS blue, mustard, peacock.
Real zari
Silver-gilt thread, tested for purity and wound by hand for the border, the pallu and the buttas.
Korvai
Border and body are woven in contrasting colours and interlocked by hand, a join that outlives the wearer.
Finishing
Checked thread by thread, then signed into the house ledger before it reaches the floor.
Advaya Heritage SeriesLake Como, 2018
The motif
The Gandaberunda
A bird with two heads, strong enough to carry elephants in its claws. It is the emblem of Karnataka and, in the Advaya vocabulary, a symbol of material and spiritual wealth held together.
When Deepika Padukone chose her wedding sari in 2018, it was an Advaya Kanjeevaram in real zari with the Gandaberunda across its body. The reception sari that followed was an Advaya tissue brocade with an all-over jaal. Both were limited editions from the Heritage Series, designed by K. H. Radharaman and woven for the House.
“It is very symbolic for the bride to have chosen this sari.”K. H. Radharaman, founder and principal designer
The flagship
Four floors on Ashoka Pillar Road
Eighteen thousand square feet in Jayanagar, with an Art Deco facade, brass windows that take their cue from Vidhana Soudha, a forty-foot chandelier and furniture rescued from the old houses of the south.
GGround
Kanjeevaram
The silks, shown from repurposed Burmese panel shelves and Chettinad teak wardrobes.
1First
Regional textiles
Benarasi, Phulia, Ikkat and Chikankari in purpose-built units.
2Second
Ready-to-wear & perfume
Womenswear, childrenswear and personal care, with perfumes in backlit onyx.
3Top
Menswear
Advaya for Men among brass furniture and travertine floors, in the Art Deco manner.
Prix Versailles 2020UNESCO · Best retail store, Asia-Pacific
Book an hour with a house stylist at any of our three addresses. Bridal trousseaux, Advaya limited editions and gifting, seen without hurry, with filter coffee.