Dolly Jain, sari draper to the stars, is ready for her next chapter

Dolly Jain can drape a sari in 18.5 seconds. But it took her two decades to master this skill.

It all started with a serendipitous meeting with the legendary actor Sridevi at a party in Mumbai. “I was adjusting her sari because something had spilled on it. While I was fixing her pleats, she said: ‘Dolly, I’ve been wearing saris since childhood, but I’ve never seen anyone pleat the way you do. You have magic in your fingers. Why don’t you take this up professionally?’” recounts Jain. For Jain, the words of encouragement from “Sridevi ji” landed with the force of prophecy. As soon as she returned to Kolkata, Jain began honing her skills further and studying the myriad ways one could drape a sari.

The skills, she insists, were not learned from celebrities, stylists or designers. They came from watching women who wore saris every day and made it look effortless. “Wherever I travelled—Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra—I observed ordinary women who could drape a sari in under a minute before heading to work. I picked up little details from everywhere and blended them into my own draping style,” she says. “You don’t need endless new outfits if you know how to reinvent one sari beautifully.”

It is this idea—that a sari can be endlessly reinvented—that has shaped Jain’s entire career. Today, she is a social media sensation with 2.3 million Instagram followers, holds a Limca Book of Records title for draping a sari in as many as 325 different styles, and her client list runs through India’s most photographed wardrobes—Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhatt, Priyanka Chopra, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, and the Ambani family women, among others. Her last major project? Isha Ambani’s most recent Met Gala appearance, where she wore a Gaurav Gupta tissue sari created in collaboration with Swadesh.

One of her proudest career moments remains Natasha Poonawalla’s look for the 2022 Met Gala. Poonawalla wore a gold-embroidered tulle sari by Sabyasachi with a Schiaparelli bustier designed by Daniel Roseberry. Jain had to pleat sleeves out of the sari, something she had never done before. “Every time I look at it, I pat myself on the back. These are the moments when I truly feel I have found my niche,” she says proudly.

Now, after years of pinning, pleating, folding, and fixing other people’s saris and ensuring they behave well on red carpets, wedding mandaps, and high-profile events around the world, Jain has decided to turn her passion for drapes and Indian weaves into Kisseh, her new sari label. The name translates to “stories”, and the collection brings together handloom weaves from across India, including Banarasi, bandhej, Chanderi, Maheshwari, Paithani, and Patola styles. “I do not want saris to become museum pieces. They should be enjoyed by every generation,” she says.

For Jain, Kisseh is not just another sari label. Over the last year, she travelled to weaving clusters across India and handpicked every sari herself. Each one had to pass what might be the most Dolly Jain test possible: the drape test. If a border was too broad, too narrow, or if a sari felt too heavy on the body, it didn’t make the cut.

Apart from Jain’s expertise, what also sets Kisseh apart is its efforts towards transparency. For most SKUs, the brand lists the thread count, along with details like where the fabric and zari were sourced, on the website. “One of my clients, whose daughter was getting married in Udaipur, paid ₹1.5 lakhs for a power-loom sari. This is just one instance; many people end up buying power-loom [saris] thinking it’s handloom. I wanted to change that,” adds Jain.

She also wants the label to contribute towards the welfare of weavers. A percentage of the profits will go towards initiatives that support their everyday lives, like building community spaces with televisions where they can gather and unwind.

Kisseh, however, isn’t Jain’s first entrepreneurial venture. Over the years, Jain realised that many of her clients’ frustrations with saris had less to do with draping and more to do with what came underneath. In 2021, she launched D’Coat, an underskirt brand designed to improve fit and silhouette. Six months later came a line of stretchable blouses that could move effortlessly between work and occasion wear. In a way, Kisseh fits neatly into a larger ecosystem Jain has been building around the sari for years.

Her plans include flagship stores across multiple cities, though she’s quick to clarify that these won’t be stores filled with stacks of thousands of saris. Instead, she imagines a carefully curated space where every important weave from India is represented, even if that means having only five saris from each weaving tradition. “More than stores, I want them to feel like spaces for stories. I don’t want people to simply buy a sari,” she says. “I want them to pick one up and remember a story or create a new one.”