Bimla Bissell
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Introduction
Upasika Singhal, Jan 10, 2025: The Indian Express
Long before fashion designers talked about textile revivalism, weaver collectives or sustainability of native weaves and craft, Bimla Bissell had laid the template for them at the Cottage Industries Emporium in New Delhi. As a fellow advisor there in 1958, she used that expertise in guiding her husband John Bissell to set up FabIndia, the fashion brand that would not only save India’s textile heritage but restore the primacy of regional fabrics, be it Chanderi, Sanganeri, Kutchi or Banarasi in the pan-Indian consciousness.
Mainline fashion designers, who worked on derivative ideas and justified creative excesses as originality, are now following Bim in contemporising traditions with an innate confidence that was missing before FabIndia made them fashionable, cool even. It is because of Bim that FabIndia created its own pools of artisan communities across the country, a model that is now followed by many government-promoted weaver clusters. It is also because of her that the concept of design flowed from garments to furnishings, furniture and crafts, redefining Indian chic.
Art and textile historian Jyotindra Jain said that Bim was one of the pivots of the transition between a Western to an Eastern aesthetic.
“Post-independence, India was trying to locate its own aesthetic. Khadi was Gandhi’s main instrument for struggle. So when Sarojini Naidu went to attend the Roundtable Conferences on India’s self-rule, she told Gandhi jokingly that she would wear her temple silks but not any drab khadi…Bim and her husband John Bissell had an eye for this extraordinary aesthetic and numerous traditions of weaving, embroidery, and tie-dye…they saw the immense potential in Indian handloom,” he said.
While Bim was best known for her work on Indian textiles and being a part of the ethnic chic movement with cultural czarina Pupul Jaykar, she was also known to be a gregarious person till the end of her life.
Recalling his 40-year friendship with Bim, journalist Sunil Sethi said, “The remarkable thing about Bim and John — one thinks of them indivisibly because they were such a unique partnership — was that despite all the connections they had in India, in the US, internationally too…they were an extremely committed and socially conscious couple. They knew people from all walks of life. One of their great annual celebrations was the Christmas breakfast they held in their house at Panchsheel Park. It was an institution. It started at 8 a.m. and carried on till nearly lunchtime. All of Delhi would turn up. There would be freshly brewed coffee and scrambled eggs, cakes…what have you. It would grow bigger and bigger every year. There would be appams and Indian and Western food.”
Her acumen wasn’t limited to textiles. As Social Secretary to US Ambassadors and as External Affairs Officer at the World Bank in New Delhi from 1975 to 1996, she developed an idea of what worked with expats and how they could co-opt Indian design elements to globalise Indian fashion.
Although FabIndia took off, Bim did not rest easy. In 1992, with the help of Japanese government funds and the World Bank, she founded Udyogini, an NGO that works with assetless, landless women in India, with Ela Bhatt of SEWA as Chair.
Bim’s boundless joie de vivre left an impression on social worker and craft activist Laila Tyabji. Months before her passing, despite being hospitalised, Bim arrived at a scheduled lunch as radiant as ever, wearing her signature bangles and bracelets. “After lunch, as the rest of us looked forward to our postprandial Sunday naps, she brightly informed us she was off to a dentist’s appointment, later to a lecture at the IIC, and then would squeeze in a friend’s book release before going on to the farewell dinner for a departing diplomat. All of us, well over a decade or two younger, were duly put to shame! So characteristic…” Tyabji reminisced on social media.
Describing her as a “down-to-earth Punjaban” with a sharp wit and a keen eye for authenticity, Tyabji noted Bim’s intolerance for pretence and her practical, resourceful nature. “She took no nonsense but always gave people the benefit of the doubt,” she added.
