Marathwada · Deccan Inland Plateau
Marathwada dresses like the rest of Marathi country with two additions that belong to it alone — the Paithani, whose tapestry-woven pallu was worked out on the Godavari bank, and a Deccani town wardrobe of sherwani, cap and khada dupatta that survives from a court culture that was administratively Urdu. The third distinct dress here belongs to nobody's court — the Banjara tandas dress in the loudest textile in the region.
What is worn
Nine yards draped without a petticoat, the centre pleats drawn between the legs and tucked at the back so the garment works as trousers. Field-practical, and now largely ceremonial except in the villages.
Worn for: Everyday among older women, ritual among younger
Silk with a gold-zari pallu woven as tapestry rather than embroidered. It is bought once, worn a handful of times and passed on — in most families it is treated as an asset, not a garment.
Worn for: Weddings, and as inherited property
A dhoti with a shirt or bandi, and a tied pheta or a Gandhi topi. The pheta's fold differs enough between talukas that older men can place a stranger by it.
Worn for: Everyday and ceremonial
The town formal wardrobe inherited from a Persianate administration — a cut and a cap that stop at the district border on the western side.
Worn for: Weddings, Eid, formal
A six-yard dupatta worn with kurta and churidar and held in a fixed arrangement over the head and both arms. A Hyderabad State bridal dress that Marathwada kept along with everything else from that administration.
Worn for: Weddings
A heavily embroidered backless blouse and wide skirt loaded with mirror discs, cowrie shells and coin work, worn with ivory or plastic upper-arm bangles and a coin-hung head cloth. It carries more surface work per square inch than any other dress in the Deccan.
Worn for: Everyday among older women, festive among younger
Weaves and textiles
Registered as a geographical indication in 2010 as Paithani Sarees and Fabrics. Pure silk warp and weft with a zari that was historically drawn gold and is now silver gilt; the pallu and border are built by hand, thread by thread, with no design floats on the reverse.
A figured cloth of silk and cotton woven on a jacquard-fitted pit loom, with the pattern carried by an extra weft. Local tradition ties its arrival to the fourteenth-century capital transfer to Daulatabad. A handful of workshops remain and most of what is sold as Himroo is power-loom cloth.
A satin-weave cloth with a silk warp floating on the face and a cotton weft against the skin, so the garment shines outside and breathes inside. Made across the Deccan and Gujarat; nearly gone here.
A coarse black blanket woven by Dhangar shepherds from the wool of their own Deccani sheep, on a horizontal pit loom. Rainproof when new, and still the standard field blanket in the Balaghat uplands.
A quilt run up from worn cotton saris layered and hand-stitched in long running lines. Domestic, unsigned, and the reason very little cloth is ever thrown away in a village house.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Marathwada — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (11)