The factory’s reputation for exquisite workmanship has led to work in Belgium and Germany beading bridal fabrics, facilitated by Scarvelli to ensure that they are fairly paid for the work they do.
   ‘I can’t give them work 365 days of the year so I supervise international clients they do work for. That keeps them self-sufficient and I don’t take anything from them,’ he said.
   ‘They are like my family and I protect them as much as I can. I have heard of so much abuse in India from the western world and think it is disgusting.’
   A co-op manager from the village runs the factory and supervises the workers. Surplus money goes into a co-op fund to be used for helping the extended families of the workers and people in the village, from getting running water and pumps into the village, electricity, helping people into housing, or aiding those who require urgent hospital attention.
   The factory also holds basic medical supplies with 24-hour access.
   Now fluent in Bangoli, Scarvelli travels to India several times a year and, when I tracked him down, was planning his 22nd visit.
   What is amazing is that when he first set out for Calcutta, he had no idea he was headed in the right direction—a fact he only became aware of when a trip to Bombay revealed that all the beadworkers spoke Bangoli.
   Aside from the knowledge and techniques he has taught the villagers, they have also taught him.
   ‘When we all get stuck we go to this guy in the village who is in his 50s and a master who will work it out in 10 minutes,’ Scarvelli said.
   The work the factory produces is so accurate that often people cannot believe the work has been done by hand.
   ‘That is a compliment when I hear people say that,’ he said.
   His masterpiece to date is his American Rose beaded V-neck shift dress, a combination of nine colours, which was a showstopper at MAFW ’04.
   Scarvelli couldn’t buy the coloured beads he wanted so he went back to the traditional method of blowing coloured dye through each individual bead. It took four people two weeks to dye the beads, and then another four weeks for Scarvelli and three assistants to bead the fabric before it was ready to be cut.
   However, it is a labour of love for Scarvelli, who is driven by quality and ethics, and will always choose the high moral ground over convenience.
   He rescues rose quartz from sculptors’ scrap, polishes up and drills holes in for beading.
   ‘[Mankind is] using so many of our natural resources that we cannot reproduce. [At Gabriel Scarvelli] we use as much as possible of any natural resource rather than throwing it away,’ he said.
   Scarvelli favours natural fibres. Fabric scraps from the workroom go to the local kindergarten to use for artwork, while he worries about the mounds of polyester being created by clothing manufacturers ‘because it is not a reusable plastic,’ and ‘the chemical wastage that comes off synthetic dyes is insane.
   ‘Under average conditions it takes synthetic fibre 300 years to break down. Even when it breaks down into particles the soil is going to be chemically polluted. We have been producing nylon since the 1940s and I’m just wondering where it all went to,’ Scarvelli said.
   ‘While we probably will never be able to eliminate synthetics we can pull back on how much we use and make clothes last better so they will last longer and be friendly to the environment.’
   He admits that he uses nylon zippers (presently he hasn’t another option); however, for the most part, the materials he uses are natural and biodegradable. Only two dyes he uses contain low-grade chem-icals; the other 38 are organic.
   Giorgio Armani, who is growing organic cotton crops in Peru, is an inspiration.
   ‘I really admire Armani for that. He has seen our environment degraded from products that he has previously used, and we are looking at doing the same thing in India,’ he said.
   The people of his village recently offered to gift Scarvelli some land so that he could build a house, as a way of thanking him for all he has done for them. However, Scarvelli has other ideas.
   His goal is to help them set up an independent organic cotton plantation for the village women to run, where they, not him, financially benefit, and hopes the project will help them become self-sufficient and raise their self-esteem in a culture that doesn’t recognize women as equal.
   He has already received interest for the cotton from a buyer in the United Kingdom.
   ‘I think we should look after what we own and take responsibility for all our actions and the effect they have on the general picture, and the future of the world,’ Scarvelli said. •

Carolyn Enting is fashion editor of The Dominion Post and TV One’s Good Morning, and is a regular Lucire contributor.