What a bridal blouse actually costs, broken down

Three things set the price of hand embroidery: coverage, materials and hours. Coverage is what percentage of the blouse carries work. A neckline motif is 15%; a full jaal is 95% and includes the parts nobody sees until you raise your arm. Materials range from silk thread at a few hundred rupees to kundan and quality dabka that can run into thousands for one blouse. Hours follow from both — one artisan on a frame produces a certain amount of work a day and no more.

A ₹2,800 bead-edged blouse is eight hours of work in seed beads on art silk. A ₹48,000 full-jaal is 210 hours in dabka, nakshi, kundan and cutdana on raw silk. Both are honest. What is not honest is a ₹6,000 “bridal” blouse with photographs of ₹40,000 work, which usually means glued stones, machine-run chain stitch, or work outsourced to a workshop being paid by the piece.

How to tell: ask for a photograph of the reverse. Hand aari work shows a neat chain on the back and knots where each stone is anchored. Glued work shows nothing on the reverse at all — which is also why it comes off in the wash.