Rajputi Poshak in Jodhpur

A Jodhpur customer picks differently from a Jaipur one, and after enough years behind a counter you stop arguing with it. Marwar likes weight at the edge. The kor of the odhna runs broader here, gota-kiran doubled where Jaipur is happy leaving it single, and danka turns up on kanchli and kurti far more often than it does in our Jhotwara shop. Danka is the flat silver plate, hammered thin as a fingernail and tacked down with one knot so it tilts and throws light back at whoever is holding the camera. Mothda bandhej as well, the fat lentil-sized dots, usually on a maroon or piliya ground. Ask for something light in Jodhpur and you will still be handed a border you can feel between two fingers.

The blue city does its own thing to colour. Under all that indigo lime-wash lal goes deeper, firozi turns clean and cold, and a rama green that looks sullen indoors sits beautifully on a terrace at four in the afternoon. From Gangaur through Teej the city moves to bandhej and lehriya in cotton and thin georgette, because nobody is wearing eight kilos of tissue through a Marwar June.

So we cut differently for summer. A hot-weather poshak is not a bridal one with the tilla taken off. The kali count comes down, we line the ghaghra in mulmul instead of stiffening it with can-can so the ghera falls rather than stands, and the magji at the hem is piped narrow, two fingers instead of four. The kanchli gets a longer dori at the back for the days when nothing sits right by noon.

Now the bride. A Marwari wedding day starts long before anyone sees the poshak. Haldi in piliya or aam-pila, the odhni thin enough to take wet turmeric without sulking. Then mehndi. Then the banna-banni evening, when the family finally shows what it has spent. The bari, the poshak that comes from the boy's house, is the one that ends up in every photograph: full ghaghra, often 24-kali, kanchli and kurti above it, and an odhna with a border deep enough to hold its own shape when she pulls it over her head for the milni. Aad at the throat, borla or rakhdi at the parting, bajuband on the arms, kamarbandh at the waist, mojari that nobody photographs and everybody complains about by the third hour. One thing we do quietly on the heavy pieces: a 24-kali ghaghra in real gota carries real weight, so we set a doubled cotton band inside the waist under the naada. It stops the drawstring cutting a line into her by the time the phere begin. Nobody notices it. That is the point.

Our Jodhpur brides almost always ask for asli chandi gota rather than the plastic-coated stuff, and their mothers are usually the reason. Real silver comes to us by weight and it behaves like silver: it dulls to a warm grey over a decade, it can be brought back with imli and a soft cloth, and if the poshak is ever taken apart the gota is worth something to the gota-wala. Coated ribbon flakes at the fold in five years and is worth nothing at all. We say this at the counter and let people decide.

The making happens in Jaipur. Our 214 karigars work out of the same workshop our family has used for seven generations, and a made-to-order poshak takes roughly 38 days on the adda, thread pulled taut across the wooden frame by lamplight, tari and danke set by hand, nothing hurried to hit a date we cannot honestly hit. The room smells of fresh gota and machine oil and somebody's chai going cold on the windowsill. The piece then travels to Link Road for the last part: fitting, kanchli adjustment, hem, and the small arguments about odhni length that happen with almost every family. Each one is numbered and signed, and it goes home in our heritage trousseau box.

If you have already left Jodhpur for Ahmedabad, Delhi, Dubai or Houston, send measurements and we will ship it to you. We post to 42 countries, and a good number of those parcels began as a phone call to this shop from somebody's bua.

Questions, answered