Poona sarees are usually fine cotton or silk sarees in a solid colour with a contrasting border. The sarees may or may not have zari and, if they're cotton, they can cost anything from 200 INR to about 4500 INR (as of 2015). The more expensive sarees are often white or off-white with a zari-filled border. The colours used include green, pink, mauve, beige, orange, blue, grey and black although the combinations of colours are not entirely random. Blue and black, for example, a combination often seen in sarees from East India, is apparently never used in Poona sarees – I’m basing this on being told by several shops which sell Poona sarees in its old city that this particular combination is not used. (I’m enamoured of the combination myself, and specifically went looking for a black Pune saree with a copper sulphate border on my last saree trawling trip to the old city.) Apart from a solid body, the sarees may also have checks in the main body, often of the ‘baby checks’ kind wit...