Fashion With Traditions

Globalization has occurred and the developing countries like India and others have opened their gates to foreign brands and companies to enter the market and lure the crowd in the best possible manner. A normal Indian mall is full of showrooms showcasing world’s most sought after brands. Men, women, girls and children, irrespective of the age, throng the showrooms of the high end foreign brands and every fashion crazy person desires to carry those brands! Yes, the world has modernized and people have started giving the top priority to their looks and couture. As the purchasing power is increasing, so is the level of fashion acumen of the crowd. Walk out on the roads today and you would get to see girls in the best of the attires and boys carrying colors that some years back were considered female specific! Zara, Mango, Chemistry, Tommy Hilfiger are some of the brands that have created a comfortable niche for themselves in the Indian market.

However, in the last few years the fashion industry has seen a new trend. The trend of going Indian aka the trend of going traditional! An average Indian girl in the age group of 18-25 is not just happy wearing the halter dress from Mango, but she wants to have a multi dimensional fashion sense and probably 4 out of 7 days in a week likes to wear salwar kameez or a typical Indian styled kurti to college/office coupled with a kolhapuri chappal and a pair of jhumkis. If any of you ever visited the Delhi University campus in the last 4-5 years, you must have seen more than 50% of the girls going traditional. Gone are the days when a girl wearing salwar kameez was labeled as outdated. The traditional Indian clothes are not just the world’s most comfortable clothing, but they bring out the real beauty in a girl and add to the charm and grace of the one wearing them. The traditional clothing items have become a rage in our film industry as well. Who can ever forget the beautiful Kareena Kapoor in the semi-traditional attire (Patiala salwaar and a long t-shirt) while running after her missed train in the movie Jab We Met or her beautiful salwaar kameez in the song Nagada from the same movie. She looked as beautiful and charismatic as she would look in an exorbitantly priced D&G dress. That was about the movies, but even in real life actresses like Aishwarya Rai and Vidya Balan carry the sarees and Anarkali styled traditional Indian suits in a very well manner. Both of them walked the red carpet at the International Cannes film festival wearing traditional Indian clothes with one of them even sporting a nath (Indian name for nose ring) and getting oodles of compliments and positive reviews.

Fashion is not just about wearing western and high end brands but it is about looking good in whatever one may choose to wear. A fashionista is somebody who can easily be distinguished in a maddening crowd of many people on the most non-glamorous of the occasions. A normal kanjiwaram saree can make a female look like a diva if worn and accessorized properly. There is a lot of creativity and talent around and people have learnt to mix and match and wear and look special! Kurtis are coupled with jeans, kolhapuri chappals are coupled with short dresses, bright colorful Rajasthani styled bags are being carried with polo t-shirts, men/boys are carrying jholla styled bags to colleges and experimenting with pink/orange/red colored knee length kurtas with jeans, women and girls are wearing big traditional neckpieces over western attire. Time has come to experiment and fuse different styles together and create a new statement altogether. One does not need a stylist or a designer for this, mere presence of mind and a little creativity is enough to create the perfect look. So go ahead, amalgamate traditional with western and rock the Indian streets!

Indian Handicraft

An amalgamation of various states, a beautiful mixture of various customs and religions, India is one traditional country with a rich culture. Right from its endless list of cuisines to the hundred of languages spoken at various corners in this country, tradition is something that binds all the Indians together like no other country. Out of this revered basket of the great Indian culture and tradition, comes out the art of creating crafts with the deft usage of hands and manual labor which has its unique identity in the world and people know it by the name of Indian handicrafts! At some particular time when Gandhi ji sat down on a dharna to oppose the foreign goods gave rise to the Khadi culture, then at some other instance a casual factory started by the Maharaja of Mysore gave birth of the world famous Mysore Silk Sarees, which as we know every woman craves to have in her closet! The rich tradition of India has given a lot of room to the Indian handicrafts to flourish and spread its beauty across and in due course of time, the Indian handicraft industry has grown and matured. The crafts are composed of varied materials across varied themes depending upon the culture of the location the craft is being produced at.

At this point of time, if somebody starts to list out the types of crafts composed in our country, one would end up writing pages and pages but still the list would never exhaust, such is the vast sea of crafts produced by the men and women of this country. The beauty of this industry is that the people involved do not consider it as a way of earning their wages, but they take upon themselves the onerous task of carrying forward the legacy of the art and let it live in the hearts of many people forever. If we begin to map the start of the Indian handicraft industry, we would find out that some many years back people lived in small groups called tribes and tried to make utility goods for themselves by the use of their hands etc. Soon they started selling out these utility items to earn wages and in due course of time, as the time passed these goods came to be known as handicraft goods used mainly for decoration and loved by people all across the world. Each region in India has its own trademark handicraft item which describes the region and becomes its specialty. Right from Kashmir being famous for its paper mache products (usually decorative items), its walnut wood craft items (decorative items made out of walnut) and copper handicrafts to the world famous chandeliers and bangles from the Ferozabad city in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, each has its own identity and a special place in the heart of the market and the hearts of the handicraft lovers. The North region of our country is especially famous for its garments. The Banarasi silk sarees, warm woolen clothes from Ludhiana and Lucknowi suits and sarees from Lucknow are few of the items to die for. They not only appeal to the masses but the factories in which these items are produced provide a lot employment opportunities to the locals as well. Coming towards the Eastern part of our country, home to a lot of tribes, we would find plethora of handicraft items being produced. The tribals in these areas are particularly known for producing crafts using eco-friendly items like natural straws, fibers, stones and so on. Mizoram, out of the seven sisters, is especially known for its unique stone pottery art which is a rarity. One more beautiful and unique item that comes from the Eastern region is the hand strewn basket and other items made from natural straw which people use as baskets to carry stuff or just for plain decoration. Not only baskets, hats are also strewn from those straws and sell a lot among the tourists! That was about the East India, on the similar lines, the Western part of our country has a lot to offer to the world in terms of art and craft. The state of Rajasthan is well known for its marble, Rajasthani dresses, jewellery items and puppets. The gigantic state of Maharashtra on the other hand is known for its leather products like Kolhapuri chappals etc. The southern part of our country is extremely rich in its tradition and culture and therefore has a lot to offer to the craft lovers in India and abroad. The coconut crafts, the invaluable pearls from Andhra Pradesh, the Tanjore paintings, the gold jewellery, silk sarees, all of these products can take anybody’s breath away in a single look!

Not only are the Indian handicrafts loved and adored in India, but they have occupied a special place all over the world. The Indian handicraft industry is booming like never before and adding positively to the economic growth of our country. Not just economically, the Indian handicraft industry has also helped us earn a lot of respect and recognition all over the world!