Why I Chose Modal Silk, Not Pure Silk, for the Nilufar Stole

From Deesha's Desk, the first entry in Katha, the House of Falguni journal of cloth

People assume that if you love cloth, you always reach for pure silk. I did too, for a long time.

My formal training began with a Diploma in Textile Manufacturing at R.C. Technical Institute, followed by a bachelor’s in Textile Engineering at L.D. College of Engineering and a Master’s in Fashion Management at NIFT Gandhinagar. The early lessons taught me to chase the finest fibre: the higher count, the more expensive weave. Years of working with cloth taught me the rest. I watched how fabric behaves on real shoulders through a long day. The finest fabric on paper is not always the right one for the woman who has to wear it.

So for the Nilufar Stole, I chose modal silk on purpose. The reasoning says a lot about how we make things at House of Falguni.

What modal silk actually is

The name confuses people, and some sellers keep it that way.

Modal is not silkworm silk. Mills spin it from the pulp of beech trees, a plant-based fibre, finer and stronger than ordinary viscose. The trade calls it modal silk when it is woven to a silk-like finish: the soft sheen and liquid drape you know from silk, in a fibre that behaves differently.

I say this in the open because a textile designer should never let you buy under a misunderstanding. Modal silk earns its own place. It is a different material with its own strengths, and for a stole you reach for often, those strengths count more.

Why it drapes the way it does

Hold a pure silk dupatta and a modal one side by side and you feel it at once. Silk has body. It holds a shape, catches light sharply, and can sit stiff on the shoulder. Modal falls. It carries weight without stiffness, so it pools and moves with you instead of holding its own architecture.

For a stole, that fall is everything. A stole knots loose at the neck, slips off one shoulder, and stays put. Modal does that better than most pure silks I have handled. When we say the Nilufar moves with you rather than sitting on you, we mean the fibre.

Why it holds the Ajrakh

This decided it.

Artisans hand block-print the Nilufar in the Ajrakh tradition, a natural-dye craft that builds colour into the cloth over many rounds of resist and dye. That work only pays off if the fabric under it takes the dye deeply and holds it.

Modal drinks natural dye and keeps it wash after wash, without the chalky fading of cheap synthetics or the bleeding you sometimes get on raw silk. The deep indigo and madder of the Ajrakh stay true. Choosing modal protected the artisan's work so it survives a real wardrobe, not one careful wear.

The honest trade-off

Now the catch, because From Deesha's Desk stays honest.

Modal breathes and stays soft, and it wrinkles. Like all natural-dyed cloth it asks for gentle care: hand wash cold and separate, or dry clean, dry in shade, iron low. It will not survive a careless machine cycle. Nothing an artisan dyes by hand ever does, and I would rather tell you that than sell you a promise the cloth cannot keep.

One thing to take from this first entry: at House of Falguni, the fabric comes before the design. Every material earns its place. That idea runs through Katha, a journal where I walk you through the choices, the crafts behind them, and the hands that make them.

Next in Katha: the weavers behind our handwoven Ikat, and why a pattern that lives inside the cloth is worth the extra weeks it takes.