The pandemic is responsible for tectonic shifts, including in fashion. With the consumer getting abstentious, designers are dipping into the middle-class sentiment to invoke desire in high-fashion
Abraham & Thakore; (right) Rishta by Arjun Saluja
There is a reason why the East is the opposite of the West. In his new book, Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, social epidemiologist Dr Nicholas Christakis predicts that post the Coronavirus pandemic, society will revert to indulgence. Not very different from what it was like in the 1920s following the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
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But, in the East, especially India, 2021’s dream looks a lot like it did during the launch of Mahatma Gandhi’s Swadeshi movement. It was about burning of foreign textiles and buying local; it was about the growing network of hand-spun khadi weavers to give a visible face to the Civil Disobedience Movement and defining the Indian garb.
These were new clothes free from colonial oppression and worn by India’s elite and the bourgeoisie alike. They had a strong sentiment, if not sentimentality, attached to them. “I don’t think we realise that the Swadeshi movement by itself, which led to India’s independence, is one of our biggest fashion statements,” says Kurush Dalal, archaeologist and culinary anthropologist.
The pandemic made the Indian customer change dramatically. Or, at least that’s what designers, stylists, visual artists and streaming channels want us to believe. This customer will revisit the shopping cart, not once, not twice but three times before making a purchase. The new customer will ask: Do I need it? Is it affordable? Is this the best deal I can get? Who is it helping? The result is a focus on a smaller wardrobe of old and new, which allows you to mix and match. “Times are tight, the GDP is down, people have lost their surplus income,” Dalal reasons.
It’s not a surprise then that the portrayal of the icons who prod us to consume, inform and entertain us, has also obviously shifted to the real-life mosaic of cultures. “There was a time when exotic, royal India was the ideal. Now, it’s the real India that everyone is aspiring to connect with. Campaigns built around size and gender diversity, and indigenous values are purposely asserting this moment. The stories that are emerging don’t belong to someone else. They are about you,” designer Arjun Saluja says.
Bollywood is also suddenly not about the unbelievable and unattainable, but authentic and within reach. It’s exciting and interesting when Family Man Manoj Bajpayee breeds conversation, and some controversy. A big Bollywood star is replaced by the internet-famous South Delhi girl, Dolly Singh who shares the cover of Elle India’s digital issue with Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy and breakaway actor Shweta Tripathi, this month.
It wasn’t always like this. “Back in the day, those who designed clothes were considered elitist, so naturally, fashion largely favoured poshness,” says Dalal. He shares the example of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, one of India’s most popular soaps launched in 2000. It introduced Indian homemakers to the upper-class lifestyle through the story of a priest’s daughter who marries into an industrialist’s family. “We watched ladies in the show go to bed in silk sarees and wake up with a face full of makeup. The upper-class traditions and attire managed to shape and distort the cultural sensibilities of the vast middle-class, in effect homogenising even the sindoor,” explains Dalal.
But with everything else changing, it couldn’t have been long before fashion warmed up to realism too. As the wheels turned in 2020, designers shunned the seasonal cupboard of occasion wear for off-the-social media, Made in India ensembles imagined for ‘regular’ buyers. As if to say, we have options now. Whether this turnaround speaks of a momentary blip of consciousness, or refashions into a lasting market reality with mega investors like Reliance Brands and Aditya Birla Fashion directing the informal tactics and style, is for us to see.
The makers, however, seem to have certainly chosen sides. “I have an uncomfortable relationship with fashion because I grew up with middle-class values of consumption, which included not throwing away anything,” Sabyasachi Mukherjee told mid-day in an interview preceding the launch of Sabyasachi x H&M prêt collection last fortnight. It is for the first time a young, fashion -savvy Indian professional can perhaps afford a Sabyasachi label without having to break the bank or wonder how s/he/they will overcome the fear of entering the gilded doors of his deluxe stores.
Mukherjee believes that the onus of fashion being sustainable is equally on the consumer. “But the middle-class in India is already invested in a circular economy. Sarees are repurposed into quilts, Bata chappals repaired.” And just like that, you realise something has changed when a couturier proudly speaks of middle-class values.
David Abraham, creative director at Abraham & Thakore, says that they tapped into the ready-to-wear market long before it made post-pandemic business sense. Their au fait garments are positively defined by familiar Indian shapes through a line of kurtas, dresses, jackets, churidars and sarees, and locally sourced embellishments and fabrics. “The ready-to-wear segment will soon become the real substance of Indian fashion. It’s what we call, affordable luxury,” Abraham adds.
Saluja reckons that change begins slowly inside the psychological space. “It’s the constant hustle between the parochial past and an open-minded present that interests me. I hope it shapes into a new idea of homegrown clothing identity.” Essentials, his ready-to-wear label of seasonless, gender-fluid clothes, is clearly inspired by everyday Indian costumes, reimagined in hybrid concoctions.
“What’s aspirational for me?” is a question hovering on everybody’s mind, regardless of their social standing. “I attended college at a time when girls wore baggy salwars with kurtas, and anyone who turned up in a knee-lenghth skirt was perceived as powerful since it signalled that she belonged to an affluent family. Today, everyone wears a skirt. Renting a Louis Vuitton bag for a week, and Fendi the next is not novel. Who would have thunk?” laughs Dalal.
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