How to tell pure Mysore silk

Three honest checks, in the order we would use them ourselves — on a saree bought here or anywhere else.

Look for the Silk Mark

The Silk Mark is a hologram label issued by the Silk Mark Organisation of India, set up under the Central Silk Board, and it certifies one thing plainly: the cloth is pure natural silk, not a blend, not art silk, not polyester finished to feel like silk. Each tag carries its own unique number, and sarees sold under it are sampled and laboratory tested before the label is issued — it is not a shop's own word for itself. Every pure silk saree we sell carries one; our cottons do not, because cotton is not silk.

Real zari, or imitation?

Four tests any silk shop in Bengaluru should stand up to, including ours:

• Look at the thread end. Metal zari is a thread wrapped in fine metal wire; pull one loose strand at the edge and you should see a silk core inside the metal. Imitation zari is plastic film all the way through, with nothing inside it.
• Feel the weight. Metal zari carries real metal, so a saree with a broad zari border has noticeable heft in the hand.
• Watch how it ages. Metal zari dulls and darkens slowly and can be cleaned back. Imitation zari flakes, and once the coating lifts, the black underneath will not come off.
• Ask for the mark — and remember what it does not cover. Silk Mark certifies the silk itself, never the zari.

Our own sarees are woven with tested zari: fine wire, silver-plated and then gilded, wrapped around a silk core. It is what almost every Mysore silk saree at this price carries, and it is not pure gold zari, which costs several times more.

The feel of a true crepe

Mysore crepe silk is pure mulberry silk given a high twist before it is woven. That twist is what produces the fine, grainy surface and the drape that follows the body instead of holding a shape of its own — and it is also what lets the saree hold a pleat. A Mysore crepe silk is restrained by nature: a solid field of colour, a slim gold border, a quiet pallu, with its character resting on how the colour holds the light.