Now, Mamata set to don designer's hat

West Bengal’s first woman Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is known for being a firebrand politician, a painter and even an author and a poet. She will now don the hat of a fashion designer, setting her sights on reviving the state-run handloom firm Tantuja.

The corporation, which till the mid-1990s displayed and sold a variety of ready-made garments, sarees and bedlinen through its many showrooms, fell out of favour with shoppers for failing to keep up with private retailers and garment manufacturers.

With plans to change its lot, Banerjee has decided to give Tantuja a new look, and for this purpose she will even designs some sarees and fabrics.

Banerjee raised the issue of refurbishing the handloom corporation and making it more market-friendly at a recent meeting, and showed interest in providing some designs.

According to insiders, she has become a well-known painter simply for the novelty value of her work, and several leading industrialists even picked up some of her paintings when she put them up for sale for a variety of causes.