Sunday, June 19, 2005

Rain ware

Indian fashion designers put out spring-summer collections and fall-winter collections. Although we barely have a 'spring' and certainly don't have a fall.

Meanwhile, the one important season that we actually do have - monsoon - gets little or no consideration.

The first day it rains you feel wonderful. The days and weeks that follow - 'icky' is more like it. Blame it on the travel conditions (a couple of heavy showers can disrupt the whole city for 2 days). The half-dug roads which turn into a sea of keechad. And the lethargy of having to get out of your house at all ...

But things would be slightly more tolerable if one had more suitable clothes - and shoes - to wear. There is tons of waterproof make up available but unless you're willing to don nylon or polyster (which neither looks nor feels good) - no such luck in clothing.

Surely some copmany can do some R & D and produce 'monsoon-ready' fabric that dries quickly. And if someone can do that for denim, I for one would happily become a lifelong patron.

But ok - maybe that kind of thing is ambitious and will take some years. What about someting as basic as shoes? Your options are orange plastic (yuck!), squelchy rubber (also yuck!!). Something that does the job (of keeping ur feet dry) AND looks good I am yet to find.

Problem is, few countries experience the kind of rains we do. In England, it rains - but more pitter-patter raindrops than kutte-billi. So we'll probably have to design products ourselves rather than copy/ adapt from elsewhere.

Or wait for the Chinese to do it for us. Thanks to them, we have - at least ! - graduated to more colourful and interesting umbrellas and windcheaters.

The solution - for now - is keep some extra clothes and shoes in your workplace, so in case you get wet you don't spend the whole day feeling like a soggy sandwich.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:23 PM

    U r right rain can be icky, especially when you have to get out to it.

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  2. You should write more about the Indian fashion industry.

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  3. My office has arranged hangers to hang our wind cheaters. Last year they even gave a wind cheater to all. thanks to them.

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  4. Hi,
    I feel that you should seriously consider selling your ideas. They are really great. Even I get frustrated when it rains. Nobody has a formal pair for rainy occasions. I would love to have a pair of shoes that are good looking as well as water-proof (even eliminating the horrible smell they make even without socks). Ditto for clothes. I remember a long time back seeing a waterproof silk! saree in Mysore. It was great, but very expensive and too less in variety.

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  5. And by the way, if you don't want users to post anonymous comments, you can disable them in your blog settings.

    Also I wanted to know what point you wanted to make by choosing such a %$#%#% picture (with absolutely nothing else) for your geocities home page. Don't mind, I am rude and I can't help it.

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  6. I've let anonymous comments be.. many anons have constructive comments to make. The geocities page has a picture of tshirts I took in a dept. store... Some kind of technical jhamela - didn't mean to display it. Don't get ideas :)

    ReplyDelete

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