Kasavu

The Kasavu is Kerala’s daily-life and ceremonial saree — a plain cream cotton body with a single-band gold zari border. It descends from the mundu-neriyathum, the two-piece garment worn in Kerala since at least the Sangam period (300 BCE–300 CE). The kasavu (gold thread) border came in with the growth of the Travancore royal workshops in the 18th century. Today the weave is protected by three separate Geographical Indication tags — Balaramapuram, Chendamangalam and Kuthampully — each with its own weaving cooperatives that trace their lineage to the courts of Marthanda Varma and Sakthan Thampuran.

Three GI-protected clusters: Balaramapuram (Thiruvananthapuram district), Chendamangalam (Ernakulam), Kuthampully (Thrissur). Between them, roughly 3,500 handloom weavers, most affiliated with the state-run Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society.