At the beginning of 2015, out of the exhaustion of having to frequently move houses and living in a city that called for two kinds of wardrobes — summer and winter, I resolved not to buy anything all year. Like most people, fuelled by fast fashion and easy access to online shopping, I had too many clothes and too little space for them. The no-shopping resolution went well for a bit. In June that year I was turning 40 and planned to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain to mark my birthday. Buying suitable clothes and shoes for that was the first infraction of the resolution. Still, I held up reasonably well until October or so, when like a starving person at a Sunday brunch, I tipped over the edge and went on a mindless shopping spree. I bought all kinds of things — scouring for sales, trying to rationalise it by focussing on the amount saved, not spent, and ended up with a whole bunch of what can only be described as crap. So as 2016 came along, I was both shameful and circumspect. And so I made a new resolution, This year I’d only buy from small, independent designers — a semi-swadeshi movement of my own crafting.

My first worry was discovery. How would I find these small, independent designers? The first one was accidental. A friend of a friend, on hearing about my resolution, suggested the World of Crow. The name was fascinating enough for me to remember all the way home. I scanned through the options — knee-length dresses made from very Indian fabrics cut in westerns silhouettes. I bought a beautiful dress: black-and-white ikat with a side slit and a bright red inner layer that peeped through the sides and hem. At ₹3200, it was at the upper end of what I’d paid for something until then, but the dress was a stunner and I thought it was fully worth the money. I had to transfer the money in advance and I spent a few jittery days wondering if I’d been scammed by an unknown entity I only had access to on the internet. But the dress arrived on time, perhaps a couple of days early. The packaging was beautiful and the dress looked and fit exactly like it did on screen. People, even at stuffy Delhi parties where everyone pretends to know everything, walked all the way across the room to ask me where I got the dress. This was something that had never happened to me before.“Oh, it’s from Crow,” I’d say enigmatically.

Predictably, this early success went to my head. There was no one in the country who called himself a designer who I wouldn’t track down. When a friend posted a picture of her cat on Facebook, I asked her where the bag it was sitting on came from. A small, obscure designer she said, and I immediately wrote off anything productive for the following week. The Burlap People, the bag maker was hunted down. They did not even have a Facebook page — only an Instagram account and a WhatsApp number. I’d been looking for a bag the size of a mini-sack to carry the three books and lunch box I lugged to office everyday. Yes, the Burlap People were happy to make it for me, yes they would put a zipper closing in mine because I didn’t want to be in public transport with a yawning open sack. But first, I had to transfer the cash to them. It was ₹3,000. I sent the money and waited. And sure enough, the bag arrived. No one has asked me where I got it, but I use it every day and it is, by far, the most sensible purchase I have ever made.

Thus I moved on. Spurred on by Facebook’s incredible ability to dig into your deepest thoughts and show you appropriate ads, I discovered several “indie” designers. Starting with Khara Kapas, whose cotton dresses are beautiful yet roomy enough to accommodate that big breakfast. I bought two and wore them everywhere — office, pub, parent-teacher meetings. Then came Nicobar. Not quite the starving, indie designer I had in mind, but those shirts! Those shirts, with tiny little fun detailing — a red embroidered heart if you opened one bold button too many, a bird discreetly hanging off the back seam — it was my first real introduction to why a cotton shirt would be worth a couple of thousand rupees. My dress game moved on to Mogra Designs — a mix-and-match of traditional work from all parts of the country (the Kanchipuram border, the Parsi gara) appearing in various parts of short, hip dresses. For the first time in my life, I had a fashion cred. People asked me where I shopped, instead of shaking their head and saying, “Mango, again?”

It was all too good. Until it wasn’t. By about September this year, I was going back to some of these designers. The second round of Khara Kapas did not fit as well as the first. They had to be sent back, tried again, sent again. A dress from Crow went back and forth a couple of times and came back still too tight, still too transparent to be worn without a lining. They refunded the money, even though they didn’t really need to according to the terms of the sale, yet the tediousness of the process was getting to me. Nicobar started a store in Delhi, and even though it took the uncertainty out of the process of shopping, it took away from the novelty of the experience. My beginner’s luck had run out. I bought nothing in October and November. And I’m yet to find an indie designer who makes good winter wear. That’s me taken care of until February, I guess.

Despite hitting a trough, overall, when I look at my wardrobe, this was a good year. I bought far less — in terms of the number of outfits — this year than ever before. Each dress was far more expensive that I have bought in the years past. Yet, for the first time, I find a personality emerging from my wardrobe — an eye for detail, a premium for whimsy. It also seems to me that there is a semblance of responsible shopping coming out of this too. Fewer clothes, made and worn with greater love. And so for the first time in my life, I am carrying forward a resolution to yet another year. Small and indie will stay.

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