A bridal lehenga, three weeks after the wedding

Sweat, perfume and food residue oxidise slowly. A lehenga that looks clean on the night comes out of the cupboard a year later with yellow patches at the underarms and hem that were never visible. Those set stains are the hardest kind to lift on silk with zari, and sometimes cannot be lifted safely at all. Cleaned within a few weeks, almost everything comes out.

Not in a machine. A lined, stone-worked lehenga is cleaned by hand in sections, with the embellishment protected and the solvent or wash chosen after a test on a hidden seam. Zardozi and sequins are attached with thread or glue that a drum would loosen; a loose stone at intake is recorded and reattached, not lost in a filter.

Finishing is by steam at the temperature the silk can take, never a hot iron on metal thread. The piece is then checked under the brightest light in the building against its intake photographs — stones, seams, lining, colour — before it is packed.

Any stain we could not remove safely, any risk we chose not to take, and anything we needed your consent for. You never discover a limitation on your own. This, plus the photographs and the declared value, is what makes the guarantee real rather than written.

Folded, not hung: the weight of the work pulls on the waistband for years. Acid-free tissue between layers, a breathable cotton bag or box, never plastic in Surat’s humidity, refolded along different lines every few months. We can also keep it at the atelier between functions or from one season to the next.