Design and fashion education in India needs to overhaul its basic principles, in line with the needs of its climes, culture and people.
Nature dealt a googly to the denizens of Planet Earth over the past year and a half. The pandemic froze life on the planet like a sudden Ice Age. As we locked ourselves indoors, every industry suffered. Of late, the fashion industry, which took body blows, does seem to be getting back on its feet, though.
So what made it so vulnerable during the pandemic? Fashion has always been about excess. But when that excess is in design, production and human labour, it is bound to hurt someone at some point in time. One of the key reasons there was such an outcry among professionals involved, at the beginning of the pandemic, was that companies were worried how to pay their staffers, tailors and craftsmen, what with all economic activity and physical movement coming to a grinding halt.
But imagine if the pandemic had happened in the 1950’s, would the industry have suffered so? The answer is an emphatic no.
Guess why? Well, fashion as an industry didn’t even exist in India before the 1980’s, especially in the form it does now. Till independence, a majority of Indians wore drapes. For as long back in history as you can go, fabric in India was fashion and people who wove these were the designers. Craftsmen were at the top of the clothing and fashion hierarchy. As bonus, they could also tide over rough times as they usually worked alone.
By the 17th century, Europeans brought tailors and tailoring to India. Centuries later during the 1980s, as India stood at the cusp of liberalisation, NIFT was established and started offering the first ever fashion course in the country. But right from the beginning, the courses, concepts and pedagogy were directly imported from a cold, Western country, to a hot and humid one. Since then, fashion education in India has followed the same course structure, involving cutting, stitching and pattern-making.
Perhaps, what India really needed was a fashion course where craftsmen were students and drapes were the primary focus. Instead, we went on to become more and more Western in our attire.
Fitted clothes are perfect for a cold country, but in a hot country like ours, one needs air circulation. No wonder then, that cutting and sewing were invented in a cold country, not a hot one. In a hot country like ours, we raise our hands to hug when we meet, while in a cold country, people shake hands. This is not a simple cultural choice made long ago. It happens because of the respective climates. In hot countries, different forms of greetings involve people raising hands to ventilate their underarms, while in cold countries, greetings involve waving one hand, so that the person has to move less, quite likely because of the layers of clothing they wore. I believe weather is the only god that exists, and the heat and cold it generates has defined every act we know as culture.
Yet, till this date, 90 per cent of all Indian fashion courses include cutting and pattern making, while draping and traditional Indian attire is barely touched upon. “Indian” clothing is limited to occasional saris and dupatta on top of non-Indian attire. Men rarely wear drapes, and whatever little we see, will also disappear in a few years. I feel we might soon have to pay people to make our kids see what India used to wear and should have continued with.
Is it too late to go back to what we should have been wearing? Or can we still look at the possibility of bringing back drapes to our fashion sensibility? Designer wear and fashion rides on individualism and encourages the ego. But unless we can let go of the ego, we can never fight the pandemic of Western influence in our minds. Each culture is right in its own context. Western attire is brilliant in cold climes. But is Indian fashion, its designers and educators true to their geography and culture? That’s the question the Indian designing community must confront before the next pandemic hits us.
We as an industry need to define new roles for ourselves and hold a truthful dialogue about our needs, in this genuinely hot country.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Vent for the East")
(Views expressed are personal)
ALSO READ
Anuj Sharma is a fashion designer whose method of constructing clothes without tools or stitches, called button masala, is internationally feted