Heritage
The Angadi family began as court weavers to royal houses. Their descendants still weave; the House is where their work meets the present.
The story
“My family has been in the trade for six hundred years,” says K. H. Radharaman, “and began as court weavers to several royal families.”
He grew up around the great department stores of Paris and New York, where his father supplied textiles, and trained as an engineer at Cornell. In 2001 he returned to India with a question: why did Indian luxury not have a home of its own, built to the standard of the houses abroad?
The answer unfolded over two decades. Angadi Silks in 2001. The Advaya design label in 2010, where he draws every piece himself. Angadi Galleria in 2014. And in October 2019, Angadi Heritage on Ashoka Pillar Road: four floors of Indian luxury that would, a year later, be named the finest retail store in Asia-Pacific by the UNESCO Prix Versailles.
Timeline
The family weaves for royal households of the south. Motifs that still appear on Advaya saris, the yaali and the Gandaberunda, enter the family vocabulary.
K. H. Radharaman founds the House of Angadi with its first retail venture, in Bengaluru.
The House launches its design label. Advaya means “without a second”; its Heritage Series pieces are limited editions, many woven once.
A couture address opens on Sankey Road, Sadashiva Nagar, for the Advaya collections and bespoke commissions.
Deepika Padukone is married in an Advaya Gandaberunda Kanjeevaram in real zari, and received in an Advaya tissue brocade. Both are Heritage Series limited editions.
The flagship opens in Jayanagar: 18,000 square feet over four floors, designed with Somaya & Kalappa Consultants and Abha Narain Lambah Associates.
UNESCO’s Prix Versailles names Angadi Heritage the best retail store in Asia-Pacific, ahead of global luxury houses.
Angadi Heritage, Angadi Galleria and Angadi Silks, with the House’s online home at @angadioninsta, followed by over a hundred thousand people.
The founder
“Opulent, but never extravagant. Dravidian in its bones, modern in its manners. We call it contemporary tradition.”On the design philosophy of the House
K. H. Radharaman is founder, CEO and principal designer of the House of Angadi, and creative director of Advaya. Every Advaya piece begins as his drawing. The motifs are old; the proportions, colours and the way a pallu is weighted are his.
He designed both Kanjeevarams for Deepika Padukone’s wedding, and has dressed heads of state, royalty and three generations of Bengaluru families.
The weavers
Behind every Angadi sari is a weaving family in Kanchipuram, Varanasi, Pochampally or Phulia, many of whom have worked with the House since it opened.
We pay for the loom time, not the piece, so a master weaver can take the forty days a real-zari Kanjeevaram needs. We hold our own zari stock, tested for purity. And every sari carries the House’s word that it is what we say it is.
See the collectionsMotifs
Emblem of Karnataka and of the Mysore court. Strength that holds material and spiritual wealth together; the motif of Deepika Padukone’s wedding sari.
Part lion, part elephant, part horse. Carved on temple pillars across the south, and woven into Advaya borders as a guardian of the wearer.
The oldest of butta motifs, the mango is the sign of abundance. On a Kanjeevaram, it is woven in zari and scattered across the body like fruit in season.