Bhubaneswar, Sept. 25: Shoppers are spoilt for choice with textile exhibitions being held in the city ahead of the festive season.

While the Cottonfab exhibition commenced a few days ago, the ongoing Silk Fab Exhibition, hosted by National Handloom Development Corporation Limited, is offering shoppers plenty of attires for the upcoming festivals.

Inaugurated on Tuesday at a Janpath hotel in the city, the Silk Fab event showcases handloom weaves collected from 65 agencies of 14 states.

Varieties of silk from muga, tussar, mulberry to eri silk have been used in the classy handloom saris and dress materials.

The saris are available in stunning prints on pure silk. These prints include floral and other nature-inspired patterns as well as geometrical shapes and abstract images. The collection of tussar saris mostly flaunts tribal motifs in Santhal and Kondh painting style.

An official said the silk expo offered unique handloom styles from across the country such as garwal, dharamavaram and pochampalli silks of Andhra Pradesh, chintamani, kasauti works and Karnataka silks, muga silk collections from Assam, chanderi and maheswari of Madhya Pradesh, Madhubani of Bihar, tribal work and kosa silk of Chhattisgarh, pathani and puna saris of Maharashtra, bomkai and Sambalpuri saris of the host state, bandhej of Rajasthan, gatkora and patola of Gujarat, jamdani and benarasi of Uttar Pradesh, baluchari and kantha of Bengal, kosa silk of Jharkhand and so on. Apart from saris, the exhibition offers salwar suits, stoles, kurtis, jackets and other clothing items. The ongoing celebrations of Ganesh Puja and Nuakhai as well as Dussehra and Diwali in the coming months are drawing buyers from all age groups.

"Even in the times of online shopping, it's a wonderful feeling to collect rare weaves from the handloom expos. Silk specially remains classy and evergreen and it goes well on any occasion," said Smita Patnaik, a shopper.

The prices of the products at the expo vary from Rs 200 to Rs 20,000.

The exhibition helps the handloom agencies not only market their products at reasonable rates, but also get to know customers' choice when it comes to colour, design and weaving to improve in future, said H.M. Sharma, exhibition in-charge of the corporation.

The silk expo is on till October 1.