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Tootli Rahman, a fashion wizard

Published : Saturday, 12 November, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 499

Tootli Rahman, a fashion wizard

Tootli Rahman, a fashion wizard

Tootli Rahman, a renowned entrepreneur, fashion designer, and event planner has diversified country's fashion world through her visionary and unique innovation of lifestyle trends.  
The founder of Bangladesh Heritage And Craft Foundation, Tootli also organized the International Weavers Festival in 2016, established the Bangladesh Heritage Crafts foundation in 2018 and was elected President of the Women Entrepreneur Association of Bangladesh for 2020- 2022.
Bangladesh Brands is proud to introduce Heritage Palli by Tootli Rahman.
She created Heritage Palli with an aim to promote Bangladeshi artisans to reverse the slow decline in popularity of local crafts back to their original grandeur.
Tootli Rahman started her career nearly 35 years ago. She is the only woman in the country who has left her mark as a pioneer in numerous fields, taking the country by storm, such as garden landscaping and plant rental services. In case of wedding planning and décor, she introduced colourful designed shamian as and fairy lights made out of torch bulbs for the very first time in Bangladesh- adding a touch of glamour and fun and revolutionizing the wedding scene of Bangladesh. Tootli also introduced wrought-iron furniture and colour washed pottery for the first time, and opened the country's first wrought-iron furniture store, Xpressions during the early 1980s. She spearheaded the international Weavers Festival, organized the first ever International Folk Festival in 2015 and was the first to organize fashion shows at Lalbag Kella And Ahsan Manzil. She is the founder of design label 'By Deshi' and was the first one to experiment with fusion wear, particularly fusion weave saris in Bangladesh.
Her distinct leadership qualities led her to bring together women from all walks of life, to empower and support them through her social service platforms, as the founder and initiator of organizations such as WINGS-a support group for women, Zonta Greater Dhaka, ALO- a drug awareness program and Bangladesh Heritage Crafts Foundation.
HeritagePalli in partnership with Prerona Foundation is hosting the exclusive yet elegant exhibit of branding best of Bangladesh from  November 12  to November 13 at Aloki Convention Centre, Tejgaon in the capital.
Tootli Rahman said, "I am not a textile or a garment person at all, but apart from upholding the heritage bit, I wanted to do something for our artisans and weavers. I decided to design the saris they would weave. It would serve two purposes - promote cotton saris and, two, bring some revenue - since I did not have to pay myself."
She said, "As a child, I had travelled to several places in Bangladesh given that my father was a government servant. My mother wore a lot of cotton and she used to interact with weavers wherever she went. She inspired me."
It was only much later, in the late 1990s, that Tootli Rahman decided to get herself a more thorough education in her country's textile wealth. She went to Comilla to understand its khadi heritage. She learnt about the Jessori stitch or nakshi katha and was determined to revive it when she realised it had fallen into disuse. She talks about the Narayanganj lungi and Pabna gamchha, Roopganj's Dhakai jamdani, and the Benarasi palli in Dhaka's Mirpur, where weavers from Benaras had once arrived and settled down. "The textile heritage of Bangladesh is a sum of all these things," she said.
The Bangladesh Heritage Craft Foundation is working towards the preservation of this very heritage and one of its branches is Heritage Palli - another brainchild of Rahman. At Heritage Palli, Rahman does not want to showcase just Bangladeshi weav s and pottery, but also traditional jewellery - makdi, golap bala, hasuli made of golddipped metal - designed by the famed goldsmiths of Dhaka's "Old Town" - and items made of jute, balaka silk, khadi and muslin.
As she has imagined it, Heritage Palli is to be a heritage hub of sorts.
"It will showcase the essence of Bangladeshi heritage. Starting right from folk songs to documentaries on the history of Bangladesh and the father of the nation, to heritage sites. It would be a platform to educate the younger generation.
The Bangladeshi government is trying to do a lot in terms of preserving heritage but a lot more can be done, " she mentioned.
Between plan and palli, however, came the virus. After delayed labour, Heritage Palli was born on the 50th year of Bangladeshi Independence - but as an online startup project.
For now saris are its mainstay. Tootli  has already trained a group of women artisans to paint the saris. She said, "The women of our country have contributed a lot in making Bangladesh what it is today. There was a time when there were only male artisans. But now you will find women artisans. Even in the tribal areas, it is the women who do the embroidery. The garment industry here became what it is today due to the efforts and contribution of our women."
This line of Tootli's saris are highly different and distinct from the expensive designer wear she otherwise retails. For the new line, Tootli  got in touch with well-known artists from across the country, such as Jamal Uddin Ahmed, Rokeya Sultana, Zainul Abedin, Kanak Champa. She is printing their paintings on her saris.
She  continued, "Regular people cannot buy their paintings. If I can reproduce them on the saris we make, many people will be able to buy them." The painters and, in some cases, the children of the painters who are no longer alive have agreed to let her use the prized works. Here too the final aim is to uphold the Bangla tradition - of wearing saris.
 "Earlier, I used to work a lot with the salwar-kameez but these days I am doing more and more saris. The younger generation is quite excited about it. They tell me, 'Tootli apa, you have taught us to love and wear cotton saris once again'," she added.













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