Dress (India), early 19th–early 20th century

Silk satin dress embroidered with silk thread and small pieces of mica. This dress, called an aba or abo, was made and worn by a Muslim woman in Banni, a remote part of the Kutch district of Gujarat state in western India. The dress has an embroidered pattern over the front, done in incredibly fine chain-stitch and button-hole stitch, with tiny pieces of mirror-glass interspersed regularly throughout the design. The sleeves also use an intricate interlacing stitch called ‘bavaliya’ or ‘hurmitch’ in Kutch and Sindh, where it is used in local domestic embroideries. When the dress wears out, the embroidered area can be cut off and re-applied to a new dress. The dress would be worn with matching loose trousers, often with similarly decorated cuffs.