Ispent most of my fashion-less life in a blissful cocoon of my mother’s sartorial aesthetics, you know — silk in winter, cotton in summer and chiffon in the rains if you’re up to it — it doesn’t matter if a dinner party is in sweltering Delhi or summer-warm Stockholm. A sari is always the first course.

So there was I, in a Stockholm hotel, feeling rather pleased with my wine-black silken drape with Naga motifs on the border for an evening soiree. The elevator doors opened and I walked in, only to find a person familiar from many magazine covers and TV interviews. Leaning against one corner was Tarun Tahiliani, a fashion guru one associates with dressing those alarmingly thin-hence-beautiful creatures from outer space.

An awkward pause for a second, and then we both laughed. “What are the odds of finding a woman in a sari in a hotel lift in Sweden?” he joked as I stared, intrigued by the effortless ease of this style icon swathed in black pashmina, bordered with an elegant, thin red line.

We talked as we drove through surreal sun-lit streets, even though it was almost 8 in the evening, towards the Indian ambassador Banashri Bose Harrison’s charming dwellings in the middle of Stockholm. Of course, amidst this smart set where women wore dresses and the men were all in black suit-and-tie, one could only be grateful for the sartorial solidarity offered by our delightful hostess. Attired in pleasant printed silk, Bose Harrison too, like me, was no longer 20 and comely but rather over 40 and had clearly settled more in favour of comfort than fashion.

But why tell lies?

We all want to look our best, most of the time. It’s just the stiffness of what passes off as “western-wear” in the Indian market or the trashy saas-bahu ensembles getting marketed nowadays as casual Indian wear that make Fabindia and Anokhi the boring-yet-safe haunts for an employed woman such as myself. What do top-of-the-line designers like Tahiliani have to offer which is not too sensuous, too sexy, too costume-y and yet looks elegant and presentable every day of the week?

The sari, he said, is just right for a night out or even on a normal workday. In Delhi winter, for instance, you could use this silken length over a lycra petticoat with leggings inside and a tight, turtleneck pullover — feel warm and look dressy, yet functional. It is the drape that the sari quintessentially represents that defines true Indian aesthetics.

India likes drapes — the sari, lungi, dhoti, veshti , pagri, chunni. We draped traditionally and continue to do it. So even when “structure” seeped into Indian clothing and stitched garments made their way into every home, we still drape. A chunni draped the stitched salwar-kameez, a sari draped around a stitched blouse and so on.

But as more of us step out to work, climb on to metros, autos, drive cars or hop into buses, this just isn’t the most functional garment. I am comfortable with the sari and indeed, wear it more often than most women I work with. Yet, unlike Amma who sleeps in her soft muslin dhotis or Tarun’s grandmother who, he claims, “even swam in a sari”, the degree of my comfort with the sari is decidedly on a lower scale.

In that case, one could wear formal trousers or a salwar kameez both of which have issues that I tried to thrash out with Tahiliani. Formal trousers have a way of making you look rather dour and dressed down while the salwar kameez can just look dowdy and informal. I do wear a lot of salwar kameez but keep wishing that there was a way to make it smart and formal rather than just pretty and feminine.

Why hasn’t the fashion fraternity thought more about this, I asked him. All we get from you is a spate of impossible bridal wear or outfits so outlandish that only film stars can carry them off. That too only on screen. And then we have the fashion magazines breathing down our necks with their western version of what we should wear. Mostly, it is unwearable, unless of course, one is young, in which case you could look charming in a sack.

It was gratifying to hear him confirm a lot of my suspicions.

“I have a slight problem with magazines pushing clothing lines and styles that have nothing to do with Indian reality. It’s driven mostly by advertisers,” he told me. Vogue in England, for instance, will never put something on its cover that is not available at the Stockist in London. But this is not a rule that the fashion magazines will follow in India. So we routinely see outfits that are neither available nor are strictly wearable.

Additionally, the fashion frat is a small group of people in South Mumbai whose everyday reality might be very different from people like us. So, while they very nicely access Bollywood because it’s ubiquitous, they are not on top of what other Indian women in the large part of the country might need.

Hence women, when they try and copy these dresses in their home-grown versions, they become disasters for a variety of reasons. They may not come out very well-cut and the body shapes may not suit these clothes. It’s also about body language because we’re used to draping ourselves.

“You know, you’re going to look ridiculous in a strappy little dress but you could drape yourself very elegantly. Now think of a firangi in a sari and that’s a good analogy for the lot of us trying to copy western-wear into home grown versions. We designers have not done enough simple, wearable tunic and trouser outfits. You could have these side button capris, scarf and bundis that can team up nicely with kurtas without detailing. It looks nice, corporate enough,” Tahiliani told me.

So what do we have? Only the truth that being beautiful is about being as comfortable as you need to be. What we, used to draping, can do is to fuse and mix ethnic or traditional wear with the western structured dress and design something that suits our body shape and comfort level in order to look our best. And of course, in my opinion, do keep wearing the sari.

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