Aside global trends such as androgyny trickling in, fashion on and off the ramp in India is a working class aesthetic. You are what you wear — fashion reflects identity, body, and social relations, all at once. And in India, fashion is as much an anthropological summation of one’s environment as it is a mirror of an individual’s history
Crowds swarm amidst motorcycles laden with clothes strapped into large bundles, crammed horse carts, and an occasional loudly honking tempo, in the narrow lane. They stop every few minutes to touch the silks and chiffons on the mannequins along the open shops. Adding to the cacophony, the keepers of the shops along the road call the crowds in, promising attractive prices for the textiles, saris, lehengas on sale. lalji Sand Ka Rasta, a road with a name as unique as its ware, is a sea of glittering chaos. This is indeed the liveliest fashion street, busy all day long and into the night, in the heart of Jaipur, India’s design capital.
The garments sold here are mostly in silks, tissue, chiffon, kota cotton-silk, flashing bright colours with plenty of gold thread work all over. The colour contrasts are not timid. A deep red cropped blouse over a cream and goldlehenga in tissue, teamed with a dupatta in green, pink, and gold. Or a pink and gold lehenga embellished with emerald green motifs only on the skirt.
After every few shops there are arched gateways leading to marble courtyards congested with more shops on its remaining three sides, selling wedding saris embellished with gota and coloured sequins in designs as frenzied as the ambience itself.
It was 11 am, still early in the day for this market. A boy was sweeping his shop, blowing the dust in my face as I stood two steps below on the road. I told him that I was glad he was keeping his shop clean and asked why the street was dirtyIJ He answered, “Yeh India hai. Yahan bas aisa hi hai.” (This is India. This is how it is here), pointing to the large open drain along both sides of the road outside fancy shops. I then asked him what was special about the saris his shop sold. He told me that none of his saris were simple.
On the ramp and off it, fashion for women in India is effortfully intricate. Not effortlessly chic. More the patterns in the cut, or sewn into the design, or in the spread of thread work, better the dress. A classic cut salwar kameez without anything more to it would unlikely be worthy of praise. A plain sari easily risks being looked down as simple, the words ‘simple’ pronounced with disdain. Instead ‘festive’ was the favourite catch-word this year in the fashion frat — we could well petition to keep it as a permanent descriptor of Indian fashion.
The India Bridal Fashion Week in Mumbai and Delhi was easily among the top four fashion shows in the country this year, and much like Jaipur’s lalji Sand Ka Rasta, it was a display of aesthetically extravagant creations and glittering bridal couture, at a different price point. Sabyasachi’s aristocratic style and Tarun Tahiliani’s sophisticated understanding of feminine form stood out. The Amazon India Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2017 had pantsuits, denim and bomber jackets, and layered anti-fits matched with custom sneakers. Amrita Khanna and Gursi Singh created jerseys, boxy T-shirts and almost-track pants that could go from gym to gig and from male to female.
Indeed this year androgyny entered mainstream fashion as gender-ambiguous clothing and styles were featured in magazines, ad campaigns, and these designer collections. Paradoxically, to me this look emphasises a particular kind of femininity that is afraid to come out in the open.
For instance in Japan, Korea, and as is the case in India, where women have more traditional roles than many other societies, androgyny has taken off with rebellious gusto. Of course elsewhere too during the past three years, niche labels Hood by Air and Nicopanda have joined the iconic Comme des Garcons and Rick Owens, in provoking the ‘Is it a boy or a girlIJ’ look. Gucci’s fall 2015 show sent chiffon blouses tailored for men on the runway. Meanwhile, Proenza Schouler fitted a male model in heels and an all-black ensemble for its womenswear show, making a point that it would look chic on either sex.
But only in India is androgyny as yet mostly a one-way street, dressing women like men. It borders on power dressing where the idea equates power, strength, and superior social status with men and the belief that if you wear cool pants, you are going to be taken more seriously. As for Schouler, it would work in societies where men aren’t so concerned about their masculinity — but not in India.
According to 6 degree, a Hyderabad-based fashion technology startup that raised $200,000 from Indian Angel Network during summer 2016, the fashion industry is marked at over $1 trillion and India constitutes about 10 per cent of the global market share. A major transaction in the industry this year was Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail’s $26 million acquisition of global brand Forever 21 in the Indian market, and it was reflective of the 20 per cent annual growth of the western womenswear segment in India.
On the other hand, the Chinese yuan crashed back in June and the fashion industry expansion there stunted. Brands are hesitant on latin America; Brazil’s economy is contracting at its fastest rate since the Great Depression with 10 per cent inflation. So the enthusiastic answer to the question “where nextIJ” might well be India. Even though Indian luxury sales grew about 25 per cent in the past years, India is still outside the top 20 world markets for fashion.
About 10 kilometres to the north of Jaipur is the township of Sanganer. In the 16th century, Prince Sanga, one of the sons of Raja Prithviraj, ruler of the kingdom of Dhoondhar, founded the township of Sanganer, which he named after his own name Sanga. Paper-making and block printing on cloth became two of the major industries of this royal town, held by successive rulers of Dhoondhar. Nowadays, Sanganer has become a centre for the much celebrated Rajasthani block printed cloth.
I walked into an enormous cloth dyeing ground, bordered by the river on one side and low stone walls on the other. There were five large sinks dug in the ground, of which three had yards of cloth dipped in chemically treated water so that they would catch colour; the owner Sandeep walked up and explained to me so. Beyond the sinks was a vast expanse of land where hundreds of metres of brightly coloured cloth lay drying. Sandeep offered to take me to his home where they block printed on cotton cloth. I agreed and spent the remaining afternoon with Sandeep’s family, rounding it off with a cup of tea with his aunt on the terrace of his three-floor home at sunset. Six generations of this family have been block printing on cloth in this house. The motifs ranged from flowers and creepers, to animals and human faces as well as figurines. Utterly complicated, winding, and intricate.
“These are our traditional designs, since the days of the Maharajas,” Sandeep’s aunt explained. Sandeep butted in, “The new Rs2,000 note from (PM Narendra) Modi is an American design. But the design we make here in Sanganer is Indian.”
Aside global trends such as androgyny trickling in, fashion on and off the ramp in India is a working class aesthetic. You are what you wear — fashion reflects identity, body, and social relations, all at once. And in India, fashion is as much an anthropological summation of one’s environment as it is a mirror of an individual’s history.
The enthusiasm forkarigari comes from the vibrancy around us. Be mindful of the sights, sounds, and smells around you — at most times, there is constant stimulation from our surroundings often as a result of points of friction emerging from the contact between large groups of utterly diverse people living together. Our minds are programmed to live with it and even appreciate it. Come to think of it, we find it difficult to sit still on a beach simply watching the sun go down in the water. The vibrant local economy on our beaches does not allow it and we too feel the urge to look around us for entertainment even there. Quietude is depressing and simplicity is boring.
Similarly, I have wondered why we have a fascination for gold in Indian fashion. A dress to be worn for an occasion is more likely to have gold in South Asia than in any other part of the world. It would not be wrong to say that fashion in India is also an acute response to status-based cultural inequality here. A display of opulence on one’s dress sends off a message of probable financial opulence. We are less shy about display of wealth, as compared to most societies in, say, Europe. And so larger the gathering — such as how weddings in India tend to be — better it is as a platform to communicate this message and raise one’s social status in the eyes of others.
Design is a process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one. Designers are solution providers, unlike artists who are creators of that which cannot be quantified. Ask any garment designer for women in India, and they will tell you that they need to uplift their client on a raised social status than their existing one. We often do not prize comfort in India — rarely will we go to great lengths to wear clothes we can move in or are easy to care for. We desire upward mobility but not the forward kind, and fashion delivers this.
Clothes are a visible token of our identity. Even if I do not choose to pay attention to it, I am conveying a message about who I am. And so the choice of what we wear conscientiously often also marks our affiliation to a specific region and culture more than others, if indeed it is an important aspect of our identity. For instance, the rise in western wear amongst women is perhaps also a sign that large numbers of women identify or would like to identify themselves with the culture that the ‘West’ represents.
However, curiously, it was routine to see movie actors and actresses walk the ramp as showstoppers in this year’s Indian fashion shows. I dug into memory and did not find it would be commonplace at the Paris Fashion Week, for instance. And even if it does create a more lasting impression of the clothes or of the designer, I would still not buy a garment for myself only because it looks good on Kareena Kapoor.
But the reason for this baffling phenomenon is perhaps that the Indian fashion runway, like our movies, is a place where fantasy has a freedom that is repressed elsewhere. Attitude, dress, and body type of the models are often far different from that of the average Indian. And so while garments reflect an individual’s identity, fashion in India is also a mirror of a person’s ambition. So it inspires emotions — from disdain, desire, frustration to wonder, empowerment, love — that are stronger than in most parts of the world. Perhaps greater the ambitions of a society, larger is the role of fashion to give a semblance of how an individual would feel like once that ambition is achieved.
Couture today in India has its roots in our mainstream vibrant culture, yet with exceptions, such as designer Sanjay Garg, most of it has moved further from ready-to-wear than it used to be. It is less relevant to the lives of contemporary women, than it is to who they wish to be.
Indeed stylish women anywhere in the world try on and cast off many guises. A designer could censor imagination to make clothes for rich ladies while catering for these stylish women who need their clothes to speak to their soul. Some can make clothes that sell in order to finance their art — which is clothes that don’t sell but are a testimony of the designer’s own creativity.
While taking a walk on the streets of Sanganer, I found that this historical town of artisans and craftsmen has not remained immune to the real estate boom in urban North India. I am told that even their market has changed over the last two decades and now a lot of their creations are exported to middle and high end international stores. Sandeep’s family had told me that the family business’s first country of export was Spain and since then there has been no looking back. Traditional block designs have retained their originality and yet expanded in their own small way.
That is the point that couture in India also makes. It is not auditioning to the world as much as it is throwing a gauntlet. The aesthetics are so unique in India and the reasons for that are so intimate, that it is the world that will have to get used to it.