Tips for Buying a Silk Saree Online
Tips for buying a silk saree online
Buying in person when in India is one thing. It’s overwhelming enough. If you are like me, you are left with buying at local stores, which leaves limited choices, or you can buy online, which presents the opposite problem. Here are some of my tips for buying a good quality silk saree online.
Pricing can be a pretty good indicator of the quality. I’m not saying that more expensive means better. If the saree is really inexpensive (<100), it’s likely that is not made on a handloom and is probably not silk.
Look for Silk Mark certified sarees. This is a really easy way of confirming that the saree you want is truly silk. The government of India provides this certification to pure silk textiles.
Be familiar with the characteristics of the silk saree you’re looking for. I provide some information here, along with examples of the sarees.
Communicate with the seller. Ask for more pictures, videos, and ask for a picture of the back side (I’ll get into this more in the next tip). The videos will help you check the sheen of the saree, which is a good way to determine the quality without physically seeing the saree.
Check the backside of the saree. For embroidered sarees, this is a good way to check if the saree is handloomed and silk. A handloom saree will be smooth on the back and the pattern should look like a negative image of the front side. This won’t work for digital print silk sarees or painted sarees.
Trust your Intuition(or mine). If it doesn’t feel right, don’t buy it. Reviews can also help discern whether a seller is good or not. I have also put together some sellers that provide good quality sarees.