The Indian Block Print Dress: A History Worth Wearing

If you've ever held a 1970s Indian cotton gauze dress and felt that particular combination of lightness, warmth, and quiet craftsmanship, you already understand why these pieces have never stopped being sought after. But behind every block print dress is a story that goes back centuries — long before the hippie trail, long before the boutiques of London and Paris, long before the word "bohemian" became a fashion category.

This is that story.

A craft with deep roots

The origin of block printing in Rajasthan can be traced back to the 12th century and the Chippa community of the Bagru area, who introduced this unique craft and passed the skills down through generations. The technique spread across the region, with towns including Jaipur, Sanganer, Bagru, and Barmer each developing their own distinct styles and traditions. 

The process itself is entirely manual and remarkably labour-intensive. Designs are first drawn on paper, then carved onto wooden blocks using chisels and other tools. Natural or vegetable dyes are mixed, the blocks are pressed into the colour, and then stamped onto the cloth by hand. Authentic Jaipuri blocks are made from Indian teak wood or Sheesham wood, and are soaked in mustard oil for a minimum of a week before use — this proofs the block and prevents it from cracking during dry weather. Peculiar to Jaipuri blocks are small air pockets drilled through the wood to ensure circulation during printing, preventing the fabric from lifting when the block is raised. 

Each repeat is stamped by hand, aligned by eye, and built up motif by motif across metres of fabric. Once printed, the fabric dries on tall bamboo frames in the Rajasthan sun before being smoothed by hot roller presses in finishing units. Every product is measured, cut, and printed one at a time. No two pieces are identical. The slight irregularities — the ghost of a repeat, the breath between one stamp and the next — are not flaws. They are the evidence of a human hand. 

How it reached the West

The route that brought Indian block print textiles to European wardrobes is inseparable from the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. During the 1960s and 1970s, waves of cultural and political change swept through Western society, and reformers, nonconformists, religious seekers, and countercultural travellers made their way to Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. They came home to create alternative economic, social, and cultural expressions — expressed in the food they ate, the music they listened to, and the clothes they wore. 

India was a major centre of inspiration, and Indian hand-printed paisleys and block print textiles became a decorative sign of the counterculture. Hippies and aficionados of the new international styles got the fabrics from India on their travels, or purchased them from the increasingly popular import stores springing up across the United States and Europe. 

By 1970, on any major city street you could see women wearing Indian block-print bedspread dresses alongside tie-dye T-shirts, hip hugger jeans, and long calico dresses. Ethnic tunics and shirts — Indian kaftans, embroidered djellabas, African daishikis, and Eastern European folk embroidery — had become central to the hippie wardrobe.

The brands that brought it home

Several labels emerged in this period specifically to channel Indian textile craft into Western fashion. Their stories are worth telling.

Monsoon was born almost literally from the hippie trail. In the early 1970s, founder Peter Simon began on a hippy commune in Ibiza before embarking on an overland journey eastward through Afghanistan and India, where he discovered the extraordinary beauty of hand-crafted textiles and wanted to bring that artistry back to the fashion streets of London. Monsoon Accessorize was founded in 1973, initially as a market stall on Portobello Road selling hand-block printed clothes and shaggy woollen coats inspired by those global travels. The first Monsoon collections featured clothes made with hand-loomed cotton and silk fabrics, organic vegetable dyes, and artisan block-printing techniques, working directly with craftspeople in villages and small communities. Monsoon remains active today, though the brand has evolved considerably from those early Portobello Road roots. 

Adini has perhaps an even more direct connection to the source. Founded in the heart of Delhi in the 1970s, Adini began as a family business using traditional Indian techniques — hand-block printing, intricate embroidery, and natural dyeing — with a single vision of creating clothing that speaks to the soul. The Adini story began when one man started manufacturing in Delhi and sent brightly coloured kaftans, smocked dresses, and gypsy blouses to London — a look inspired by the colours, vibrancy and craftsmanship of India, fused with the buzz of 1970s London. Today Adini is based in London but remains true to its roots, keeping manufacturing within the family factory in Delhi. It is one of the very few labels from this era that continues to produce using the same artisanal methods. 

Phool and Ayesha Davar were smaller labels whose pieces are now among the most coveted by collectors. Both produced Indian cotton gauze dresses for the Western export market in limited quantities — pieces that moved through boutiques rather than department stores, each one slightly different from the last. Ayesha Davar in particular is known for silhouettes of extraordinary expressiveness: wing-like sleeves, semi-sheer cotton gauze, block prints that read differently in motion than they do at rest. Labelled examples are rare. The unlabelled ones — sourced alongside labelled pieces in identical textiles — are how most collectors find them now.

What makes these pieces irreplaceable

The question collectors ask is not why these dresses are beautiful. It is why they cannot be replicated. The answer is layered.

First, the fabric. Indian cotton gauze from this period — featherlight, semi-sheer, with a softness that only comes from the particular cotton varieties and weaving techniques of the era — is no longer produced in the same way. The supply chains that fed the 1970s export market have changed, modernised, consolidated. The specific weight and hand of this cloth is gone.

Second, the printing. To this day, artisans practice block printing without machines or computers — it is an art that stubbornly resists industrialisation. But the scale and speed now demanded by even ethical fashion brands means that the patience embedded in these vintage pieces — the density of the repeat, the quality of the dye, the care in the alignment — is rarely matched. 

Third, and most simply: time. The sun-washed patina, the softening of the cotton, the way the colours have settled into the fabric over fifty years — these are not things that can be manufactured. They have to be lived in. And these dresses have been.

How to find them, and what to look for

The good news is that original 1970s Indian block print dresses do come up — at flea markets, vintage fairs, estate sales, and yes, right here at Sehnsucht Collection, where we do the hunting so you don't have to. But quality varies enormously wherever you find them, so it's worth knowing what to look for.

Look for weight in the fabric — genuine cotton gauze has a particular fall and softness that synthetic blends don't replicate. Look at the print itself: hand-blocked prints have slight irregularities at the edges of each repeat, a softness to the registration that machine printing cannot reproduce. Look at the construction: quilted yokes, border panels, elasticated cuffs, and V-shaped bodice details are characteristic of this era's Indian export garments.

Labels to seek out: Adini, Ayesha Davar, Phool. And the many, many unlabelled pieces — often made by smaller workshops or boutique producers — that carry all the same qualities without the name.

Every piece we carry at Sehnsucht Collection is examined, researched, and described with the full context of what it is and where it came from. Because these dresses are not just beautiful objects. They are a specific moment in the history of craft, trade, and cultural exchange — one that cannot be repeated, only found.