India, April 23 -- "How good would you be at something if you had been doing it for over a hundred years?"

So runs the tagline of The Royal Edit-an ongoing exhibition of 105 heirloom sarees originally woven for the Mysore royal family by Vijayalakshmi Silks Limited (VSL), and recreated by them to commemorate their 105th year in business (they turned 100 in 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic). Judging by the rapidly filling order registers on opening day, pretty darn good!

The story of VSL is inextricably entwined with the history of silk in Karnataka. If India is the second-largest producer of silk in the world after China, Karnataka is India's largest producer of mulberry silk, contributing a whopping 45% of the country's output. Bengalu...