When Lycra Met Lehenga

For instance, arty-crafty activists in metro cities (including myself) often deplore the death of the sari. We cite the increasing numbers of Generation Next who are abandoning the sari for western-wear jeans and skirts, and sigh that even their mothers are shifting to salwar-kameez. This is quite true—a combination of convenience and peer pressure, fuelled by the bombardment of media images suggesting that the sari is outmoded and fuddy-duddy. In TV ads it is always the nagging old mother-in-law complaining about the toilet or the plain girl with BO who wear saris.

Much less reported is a parallel trend of literally thousands of rural and tribal women in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra who are actually adopting the sari. Abandoning their generations-old folk costumes—mirror-embroidered blouses, voluminous block-printed skirts, and flowing bandhini veils—in the process. For them it is the sari that represents upwardly mobile modernity, cutting across community and caste. Whether this is a forward or retrograde step is open to debate, given that the saris are virulently hued synthetics, with ugly western prints, mostly hailing from China. Nevertheless it is a strong and dramatic fashion trend, with huge economic, social and aesthetic implications; its impetus quite contrary to that prevailing in urban India. Their style icons are Sonia Gandhi and the saas-bahu soaps, not Mallika Sherawat or the Beckhams.

Meanwhile, paradoxically, while Rabaris and Banjarans, Meghwals and Meenas give up their elaborately embellished costumes, those same wearing styles are increasingly the design inspiration for contemporary couture—international as well as Indian. A paradigm for the shifting, versatile dynamic of Indian aesthetic.

Can a vast diverse subcontinent like India, with all its contrasts and contradictions, communities and cultures, costumes, customs and climates, ever have a single quantifiable ‘fashion’? I doubt it. No wonder the fledgling industry’s Fashion Week has already splintered in two. And what you see on the ramps merely reinforces our diversity rather than recognisable trends. Skinny black minis in one show, flowing magenta, sequin-encrusted shararas in another, shibori singlets and dhoti pants in a third, they reflect the huge range of styles and consumers. Not one fashion, but many—criss-crossing, linking and dividing the country.

When NIFT, National Institute of Fashion Technology, first opened in the late ’80s, I was one of its few craft-sector supporters. Far from thinking it an elitist extravagance alien to Gandhian ideals, I felt strongly that a country like ours, with its enormous textile industry—both handloom and mill-made—required its own professional designers, technicians and merchandisers. It was time Indians rose from their knees, from pinning seams to the dictates of foreign exporters, and that the Indian garment industry stopped being simply mass-produced, cheap copycat labour.

The initial NIFT student collections were often hilariously unsuitable for Indian lifestyles—ripoffs from already passe issues of Vogue. I remember petalled balloon skirts in which no one could sit, buckled chain mail and leather, see-through leisure wear calculated to bring out the Shiv Sena.... Indian fabrics too, woven for traditional wearing styles that were draped rather than cut, were quite inappropriate for these new usages. Consequently, designers opted for Lycra, faux leather and spandex, rather than khadi and cotton, further increasing the schism between fashion and life. Prices ranged from the unrealistic to the outrageous. "Who wears these clothes?" was the cry at those early fashion shows. Most went to goggle or ogle at the models, rather than to buy.

There has been an enormous change in the intervening decade and a half. Insidiously, India, in its age-old, mysterious way, has absorbed these new influences into its own ancient yet eclectic traditions. A new generation of young designers is using traditional fabrics and indigenous cuts with elan and confidence, creating clothes that suit Indian skin tones, figures, lifestyles and purses; while textile professionals develop new textures and weaves. Wearable pret is replacing the sensationalism of the ramp. The young are mixing tie-dye crinkle skirts, block prints, mirror-work, embroidered juthis and jhola bags with their Levis and skivvies. Craftspeople too are learning to incorporate new colour palettes and contemporary styling into their products, creating a whole new, distinctive Indian aesthetic. And every tiny mofussil town has its beauty parlours and health clubs.

There is still an enormous identity gap between ‘fashion’ and the multiple idioms of street and rural culture. Between what is worn on Page 3 or Bollywood, and in the chowks and mohallas of provincial India. This is healthy, energising and fun, as long as each different facet cross-fertilises, challenges, contradicts and inspires the other. No one should take fashion and its self-proclaimed pundits too seriously.

(The author is chairperson of Dastkar and works closely with crafts and craftspeople all over India)