SPECIAL ISSUE

Fashion is a passion

While celebrating its 31st Anniversary, India Tribune is also acknowledging the contributions made by Indian fashion designers. Today, in a fashion world, dominated by Paris, Milan and New York, India has enthralled the top-notch couture masters, around the world.

India has a rich and varied textile heritage, where each region of India has its own unique native costume and traditional attire. While traditional clothes are still worn in most of rural India, urban India is changing rapidly, with international fashion trends reflected by the young and glamorous, in the cosmopolitan metros of India. Fashion in India is a vibrant scene, a nascent industry and a colorful and glamorous world where designers and models start new trends every day. It is continuously evolving as new designers from leading institutes such as the National Institutes of Fashion Technology continue to redefine the meaning of Fashion in India.

Fashion has become a growing industry with international events such as the India Fashion Week and annual shows by fashion designers in the major cities of India. The victories of a number of Indian beauty queens in International events such as the Miss World and Miss Universe contests have also made Indian models recognized worldwide. Fashion designers such as Ritu Kumar, Ritu Beri, Rohit Bal, Rina Dhaka, Muzaffar Ali, Satya Paul, Abraham and Thakore, Tarun Tahiliani, JJ Valaya and Manish Malhotra are some of the well known fashion designers in India.

There was a time when fashion was looked down upon by many a middle class Indian as a degradation of Indian values. A fact chiefly influenced by the post-Independence belief in Swadeshi and everything Indian. Fashion was essentially a western import. Fashion was meant for the elite, and the bohemian. But as another generation was exposed to the vision of the 21st Century, and India opened up to the West, there was a need to establish a unique Indian Identity. Thus was born the idea of taking traditional Indian fabrics and styles, blending western cuts and lines to appeal to a larger section of occident as well as the masses in India. So much so, that fashion has moved out of select circles and gained acceptance even in the most conservative households of India.

The evolution of fashion in India had fashion houses overwhelmed. Their experimentation in the transference of designs of Indian origin has produced Oriental fantasies giving the Indian outfits a uniquely glamorous look around the globe.

Fashion in India has evolved from the over-used angrakhas, choghas, ghaghra-cholis, achkan, sherwani and much more. Indian fashion is alive and vibrant amongst classes and masses; whatever the decade or the century, it is here to stay. It’s comfortable, practical and aesthetically beautiful approach has changed with time now to remain modernized in every aspect. As we step in the new millennium, let's indulge in little bit of retrospection, the key moments in fashion, triggered by various socioeconomic movements during the twentieth century. For what we know of the history of fashion until the end of the 19th century, it was mostly a fascinating footnote to the history of art. Much has changed and evolved in the history of fashion in the 1900's.

When the century dawned, fashion was an exclusive enterprise, the pursuit of the wealth. The lower tiers of the society settled for garments that were more often than not entirely family hand-made-downs or stitched at home. With time, however, networks of neighborhood tailors began to evolve into a retail history and the boom followed by boutique selling. Today, garments are laser cut by computers and sourced from all over the world and can easily be bought sitting in the comfort of one's home via the internet.

"One of the most "revisited" and "retro" periods in the fashion, the '70s is often called the 'me decade'. It saw the beginning of "anything goes" culture with the result that fashion became another form of self-expression and bold colors with flower prints were adapted in tunics, with shirts and bell-bottoms. As drug culture became a mass phenomenon, psychedelic colors were garish, the shoes were tall and hazardous and silhouettes were extreme and the dressing of the '50s was definitely out.

The 70’s also saw the export of traditional material with the result that export surplus was sold within the country itself and hence, international fashion came to India much before the MTV culture. Synthetics became popular and the disco culture had a profound influence on fashion and the clothes became as flashy as the mirrored ball that spins over the dancers.
In the '80s the big money ruled. It was the era of self consciousness and American designers like Calvin Klein became household names. In India too, silhouettes became more masculine and the salwar kameez was made with shoulder pads. The influence of cable TV became more prominent and the teenage market boomed with youngsters going in for the trendy look, which in turn influenced the elders.

The '90s the last decade of the millennium was one of the extremes. The excess of the early decade gave way to the drastic pairing down and stripping away in the hands of German designers like Helmut Lang and Jil Sander.

But the decade also saw the revival of ethnicity with films too becoming more discreet and launching a "back to ethnic" look. While on the one hand the new drive for information technology popularized the corporate look, an ethno-cultural revival made people again go back to the traditional forms of art and crafts.

As it is Indian fashion is extremely alive and whatever the decade or the century, it is here to stay. For not only it is comfortable, practical and aesthetically beautiful but has changed with time with the result that it has, in the past century, and will in the coming one, remain contemporary. This is why the start of the new century tempts us to dream and remember the past.