THE ATELIER PROMISE · 30 DAYS
Live with it. Wear it once. Send it back if it isn't the one.
Bring it home for thirty days. Drape it for the rehearsal. Wear it to an evening out. Take photographs in the morning light of your own home, with the silk catching the sun the way it never does under a showroom bulb. Live with it the way a Banarasi is meant to be lived with — slowly, and with your own mirror.
If it doesn't feel like a textile your daughter will fight your other daughter for, send it back. Full refund. We re-issue the loom slot to the next patron on our list, and the master weaver in Madanpura is paid for the four hundred hours of kadhwa work regardless. Your decision does not cost a weaver his rent.
We accept worn-once returns on every full-price pre-drape we ship. Stitched-to-measure custom commissions are not eligible — because we cut the silk for you alone, and that silk, in your measurements, with your motif, cannot be unmade. For commissions we offer a different promise: free re-stitch for fit within sixty days, no questions asked.
- Worn once is fine
- Send-back postage prepaid
- Full refund minus stitch charge
- Custom commissions excluded
THE FINE PRINT, ANSWERED
Slow answers to the questions our patrons ask
We have shipped 2,800 sarees across forty-one countries. The questions below are the ones our concierge answers most often before a return is initiated.
It means exactly what it sounds like. You may drape the saree, wear it to an event, photograph it, sit through dinner in it, and dance one round of the sangeet. The pleats may need re-pressing. The silk may carry the memory of perfume. None of this disqualifies a return. What disqualifies a return is alteration to the textile itself — a snipped border, a re-cut blouse fabric, a removed pallu fall. The saree must come back the way the master weaver in Madanpura sent it.
Every pre-drape we ship has been hand-stitched at our Mumbai atelier to your specific measurements — petticoat, side zip, pallu anchor, blouse, fall-and-pico. That work is approximately twelve hours of an experienced atelier tailor's time, and we cannot recover it once a saree is returned. The stitch charge is a flat ₹4,500 deducted from the refund, irrespective of saree price. The textile refund itself is one hundred percent.
Write to atelier@danyahbanaras.com with your order number within thirty days of delivery. Our concierge replies within twelve hours with a prepaid courier waybill (DHL within India, DHL Express internationally). Drop the saree at any courier collection point in its original muslin storage bag and atelier box. Refund is issued to your original payment method within seven working days of the saree reaching our Mumbai atelier and passing condition inspection.
A custom commission begins with a naksha drawn for you — the master weaver translates your motif preferences into a graph paper card that lives on his loom for the months your saree is woven. The Katan silk yarn is dyed in your palette. The kadhwa work is cut to your width. The pre-drape is then stitched in your exact measurements. Every step of that process is bespoke and cannot be resold. We are honest about this at the point of commissioning, and we offer free re-stitch for fit within sixty days as an alternative form of after-care. We have not had a commission go un-loved in four generations of atelier work.
That has never happened in 2,800 deliveries — we triple-wrap in acid-free tissue, muslin, and a custom atelier box, and we ship only via DHL Express with full insurance. But if it ever does, the return is immediate, free, and replaced at no charge. No thirty-day clock applies. Photograph the damage on opening, write to atelier@danyahbanaras.com the same day, and the replacement is on the next loom slot.
Yes. An exchange is preferred to a return on our end, because it keeps the loom slot occupied and means a weaver does not need to be paid for an unsold piece. The exchange window is the same thirty days. The stitch charge is waived on direct exchanges — we re-stitch the new saree to your existing measurements at no additional charge. Write to atelier@danyahbanaras.com with your order number and the handle of the replacement saree.
From the women who wear our work
Verified buyers · all reviews collected within 30 days of delivery
Why the atelier can afford to make this promise
Our atelier has been working with the same Madanpura weaver families for four generations. We do not ship sarees we are not certain of. Returns, when they happen, are rare — fewer than three percent of full-price pre-drapes come back. We can absorb them because every saree we make is woven for a patron who has not yet been named.
The thirty-day promise is not a marketing line. It is the way an atelier has always worked when it knows its weavers, knows its silk, and knows the woman it is dressing.