Where do I begin?

I lived in Kerala and fell in love with the temple umbrellas used in religious celebrations. I decorated my home in Kochi with them and on my return to the UK, brought parasols back with me. Soon no occasion was complete without a parasol and people would run across parks and parties to see them.

I realised that garden umbrellas could be something far more stylish and theatrical than the white, green and black ones which dominated the market a decade ago.

The first parasols I ever saw were in 2012. A complete overwhelm of colour and heat at Thrissur Pooram in Kerala. This Hindu festival famous for its rituals, elephant parades, fireworks and fabulous temple umbrellas, started this love story with India and parasols. During this 200 year old festival as many as 30 elephants, with 15 each on either side, engage in a two hour display of around 50 parasols. 

The first parasols I ever bought were from a religious shop in Ernakulam. I lived in Fort Kochi and needed to make a tin roofed pink concrete house festive for Christmas. The solution: Keralan temple umbrellas in painted oil drums with forecourt festoon to allow some privacy from the many windows overlooking it.

Leaving India heralded a tough time for me personally and life went grey. However, I’d brought back some parasols and popped them up wherever I went. People would run across parks and parties to see them and ask about them.. I loved seeing the joy these parasols created and somewhere in my mind an idea started to germinate as I wondered why British garden umbrellas were all so boring.

In 2014 I went back to India for one of my oldest friend’s weddings @meghnadhall- and she dressed me in bright colours and fabrics. I had been going through this dark moment in my life and to be dressed in colour was inspirational and life changing, it brought me back. I wanted to share colour with others and inspire them to live in a more colourful world.

I returned to Kerala with bundles of colorful cloth and sari borders with a goal to work with the temple umbrella makers…

My dear friend Haris drove me around the Keralan backwaters to find the temple umbrella makers and translate from Malayalam.

Together we made gloriously colourful samples and I brought them back to the UK, the most exciting package I’ve ever unpacked. My life and world began to fill with colour.

Spreading out the samples was pure joy. My dear friends Colette and Tam helped me take the samples apart and work out how to turn them into a product that would be saleable.

We removed the paint from the poles and made the fittings metal, and after many months of work I flew back to India to try and make the parasols.

I ended up in Jaipur trying to source parts for the Keralan parasols, which were proving impossible to make, and I fell in love with the fabrics and embroidery there. Rajasthan had bewitched me. I designed my first collection in Jaipur using Rajasthan textiles and Keralan fringing. It took 6 months of living in Jaipur to make 80 parasols, I lived in a hotel called the Arya Niwas and went a bit loopy.

Ever grateful for this wonder@katherinetagge coming to visit after 6 months of no hugs bringing dijon mustard.

But I returned with my first collection, which I still love to this day!