How can a single, unstitched length of fabric have such a lavish story to inform?

That’s just what curator Priya Khanchandani explores in “The Offbeat Sari,” an exhibition at London’s Design Museum that runs until Sept. 17.

Three years within the making, it’s Britain’s first, large-scale exhibition to look at the sari from all angles and showcases dozens of styles, nearly all of them on loan from designers and studios across India.

Far older, and more democratic, than a pair of blue jeans, the sari has been worn for hundreds of years by wealthy and poor, aristocrats and laborers, and all genders. Over the centuries it has been protective, decorative, and worn as a method of political, cultural and self-expression.

Latterly, the sari has also turn into a go-to garment for a latest generation. Influencers are showing off their draping techniques on YouTube; designers are working with progressive colours and materials, and social media is brimming with shots of couture saris, sporty ones and sustainable styles, too.

The show is wealthy and arranged around themes of innovation, form, identity, resistance and materiality.

It forces viewers to step outside themselves, take a look at the sari with fresh eyes, and on the work of emerging and established brands and designers including Raw Mango, Diksha Khanna, Huemn, Akaaro, Ashdeen and Huemn.

The saris on show range from the unconventional to the glamorous to the sensible.

One is adorned with sequins constituted of discarded x-rays; others are printed with ink distilled from air pollution, or constituted of recycled waste, while one other has been constituted of distressed denim. Others are fit for mountain climbing or skateboarding.

One sari with a gold Schiaparelli bodice has A-list appeal, having been worn by Natasha Poonawalla on the red carpet on the 2022 Met Gala.

Khanchandani, who’s head of curatorial on the Design Museum, says she was eager to take a look at the importance of the sari within the here and now, and to disrupt preconceived notions of such an on a regular basis, ubiquitous garment.

It was quite a task provided that the sari has been alive and present in people’s wardrobes for thus long.

“There could possibly be 1,000 exhibitions, 1,000 different stories concerning the sari,” says Khanchandani. “This one highlights the importance of the sari as a wealthy, dynamic canvas for contemporary design.”

She also desired to discard the Western cultural filters — and banish any sense of exoticism. As an alternative, Khanchandani says she wanted to take a look at the sari from a fresh perspective, examine its contribution to contemporary visual language, and see where it suits into the worldwide design conversation.

Why now? She says that while the sari’s popularity in southeast Asia has ebbed and flowed (there was a lull within the ‘80s and the ‘90s when the sari fell out of fashion), a latest generation of designers has emerged. They’re taking a look at the garment in latest ways, and garnering attention from investors.

Khanchandani began to note a latest attitude to the sari when she was living in Delhi around 2015.

“It was being taken up by younger, cosmopolitan women and there have been various brands that were on the vanguard, corresponding to Raw Mango, and people brands are actually coming of age. They’re expanding across India and being approached by big investors with the chance to go global. I feel their relevance and impact is reaching a specific turning point,” she says.

Asked what surprised her most as she was putting together the show, Khanchandani says it was “the quantity of creativity coming out of individual homes,” how people styled their saris on a every day basis — with shirts, T-shirts, bags, sneakers and sunglasses — and the way the sari can contribute to body positivity.

“On the exhibition, we’ve got a wall showing images of various wearers across South Asia, but additionally internationally. It shows an immense amount of creativity and ingenuity,” says Khanchandani.

The show also offers much food for thought: urging viewers to interrogate what they wear, why they wear it, and what clothing can say about culture, family and community. It’s something that only a few fashion exhibitions, which are inclined to give attention to a single designer’s work or an historical moment, manage to do.

But then, the Design Museum is constructing a popularity as a challenger to places corresponding to the Victoria and Albert Museum, taking a look at fashion and design in a up to date context, and without end asking, “What’s next?”