Garden Vareli: A brand that captivated the nation

A lady decked up in a saree is on the swing, standing in some frames and seated in some. As Hindustani music plays in the background, the model swings in and out of the frame. With the swing’s every movement, one can see her wrapped in a different vibrant printed floral saree. This is in the 1980s.

Conceived by Rediffusion, Shilpa Shah, founder of Garden Sarees and Vareli Fabrics considers this commercial to be one of the outstanding ads of those times. The brand, which was established as Garden Weaving Factory in 1921, was from the mid 1960s to mid 1970s, touted as a major player in the textile category, along with Calico Mills, Khatau Mills and Vimal Fabrics.

Prior to Rediffusion, the brand was looked after by Benson, which merged to become Ogilvy, Benson and Mather, and is currently Ogilvy & Mather (O&M). In order to develop and relaunch the brand under a new logo, the brand withdrew its account from O&M in the early 1970s.

Next, the Garden brand identified a graphic designer named Bhai Patki who designed a flower, which continues to be the logo of the brand till date. Then began Rediffusion’s journey to add popularity and success to the brand.

Rediffusion: How it built visibility for the Garden Sarees

This project paved the way in advertising for Rediffusion’s Ashok Kurien, an account executive at the time. Shah, along with her husband Praful had approached the agency somewhere in the 1980s. Reason: Rediffusion had a strong creative team, and the clients’ expectations from them were out-of-the-box brand positioning.

A few people from the agency visited the Shahs who introduced them to the quality of prints and designs they were making. In the words of Kurien, they were like “works of art”, and the brief - “how to make Garden the finest and the most desirable saree in the country”.

Arun Kale, who was the art director, was the man behind conceptualising the first campaign. He approached Suresh Sheth, a photographer, whose studio was in the basement of the ground floor behind the Wankhede stadium. He mentioned to Sheth that they needed a model whose face reflected youth, innocence, beauty and Indianness. That is how Aarti Gupta (now Surendranath) was roped in and became the face of the brand’s first print campaign.

As the print campaigns grew successfully, they paved the way for visibility and recognition of Garden sarees. Then came the time to push for television advertising, and the result was the ad featuring a model on a swing.

Art director Kale came out with a strategy that changed outfits with every flow and movement. “It was a method of changing outfits in a very smooth, beautiful, feminine, graceful and Indian style,” said Kurien. The Campaign’s signature tune was composed by Hindustani musician, late Vanraj Bhatia.

The sarees that were advertised were positioned as very premium high class sarees. Though they came with a range of prices, the buying audience could also be lower middle class or middle class which allowed them to look at it aspirationally.

Change of hands: Switch to Ambience Advertising

Kurien recalls a decades old conversation he had with Shilpa and Praful. At that time, Kurien had just returned from a conference in Thailand. He mentioned to them that people in Thailand had stopped wearing traditional clothes and had switched to modern western clothes. He had told them, “If half of our country is under the age of 25, that entire audience is not going to wear sarees except for special occasions. They are going to switch to dress materials which they will convert into salwar kameez.”

That meeting turned out to be the trigger for the couple who said they were coming up with Vareli, specifically for dress materials. Vareli Fabrics was established. As time passed, Shilpa and Praful expected the brand to be advertised with greater personalised attention. Somewhere in the mid 1980s, Kurien established Ambience Advertising, which is today a part of Publicis Groupe and known as Publicis-Ambience.

Thus, Garden Sarees became Ambience’s first client just a year after they set up Vareli. Within a year-and-a-half of its launch, the dress material business grew to the size of the saree business. Then, the two brands were merged to create Garden Vareli. Kurien says, “Garden Vareli set the stage for design and fashion. They were always at the forefront and became a fashion brand.”

Ambience Advertising: Giving a contemporary touch to the brand

The first advertisements that Elsie Nanji worked on as a freelancer prior to joining the agency were public issue ads. Another ad that Nanji did for newspapers was on the launch of the studio line store in Colaba that highlighted their high-end silk and chiffon sarees. That is when Kurien approached Nanji to join Ambience as his full time partner. Currently, she is a design consultant and a luxury interior designer.

A Garden woman is very mysterious, but she is very Indian, very soft, good looking and demure. She never looks you in the eye, and is like a dream, which is almost like a fantasy. This was the brief to the agency.

Nanji recalls that every day, a sale ad in every language would be released in newspapers – typically 10x2 and 15x2 ads. The first print ad and television commercial that Nanji did was with former Bollywood actor Namrata Shirodkar in 1992. Shirodkar who was around 16 or 17 then was introduced to Nanji by the clients. The commercial was shot in Kodaikanal and Mahesh Mathai was the ad film director. The print ads were done by Ajith Patel.

Then Madhu Sapre came into the picture in 1993. Sapre, an athlete, was a discus thrower who was used for the Thums Up commercial by the agency. The blouses that Madhu Sapre donned were designed by Abu Jani - Sandeep Khosla. Shantanu Sheorey was the filmmaker for the television campaign (which was shot at Film City) and photographer for the print ads.

Aishwarya Rai tasted fame with the Pepsi ad that saw her say, “Hi, I am Sanjana.” She approached Nanji, who roped her in after Shirodkar and Sapre. “That was the time when we had gotten much older than the brief. We got her to wear beautiful blouses which were designed by fashion designer Hemant Trivedi. Those were much more sensual and Aishwarya had such lovely eyes,” said Nanji.

Farrokh Chothia was the photographer and Sheorey, the filmmaker. The ad film ends with Rai staring straight at the viewers. Nanji said, “We changed the music at that time, and we got Ranjit Barot to do the music. He used the same alaap but contemporised it.” They were released in 1994.

After Rai, former Bollywood actor Lisa Ray too became the face of the brand.

After the ads were printed and aired, they went on to be loved by the audience and people would cut out the ads from magazines, and rush to the tailors. “Each time, we had to create a visual dream almost like a dream sequence of a woman. So, every time, we had to test out so many concepts, both in print and film,” said Nanji.

Post the release of the advertisements, each of the models entered beauty pageants and achieved recognition and success. From the time the account came to Ambience Advertising, until almost the year 2000, every year, a campaign was released.

However, 2021 marked the year when Garden Vareli was acquired by MCPI, a company under The Chatterjee Group. The account of Garden Vareli has come full circle, back into Rediffusion’s bag, but time will tell if the magic created decades ago can be recreated for today’s GenZ and the target audience.