History insists that the quintessential Indian garment is the sari. This is akin to saying the quintessential Indian language is Hindi (or are we still debating the merits of Sanskrit in school?). In our popular consciousness, the sari has been deified to be the ultimate wardrobe item: the complete garment without a stitch. Although I’ve never known anyone wear a sari without a blouse and a petticoat. Indians pride themselves on being one of the very few cultures that still wear its traditional wardrobe in everyday life, meaning the sari. We wear it at weddings, at work, and we run in it to catch a bus or board a crowded train. We have heirloom saris, some woven or embroidered with real gold. Modern versions are prestitched, and even sexualised, we slip them on like skirts and wear them with leather halters. Magazines bring out newer ways to write about the sari to make themselves relevant to their Indian audience. Designers make saris to make money. But the salwar kameez is really our modern dress. When do we start giving it its due? [related-post] I resolve to wear a sari each year, but fail gloriously. I find it doesn’t connect with me at all: an on-the-go mum, a trend-loving fashion girl, a modern woman. My humble collections consist of real Benarasis, my mother’s Choroschs, vivid leherias from the magician Tayeb Khan, leather embroidered Gaurav Gupta’s, a BDSM-inspired one from Wendell Rodricks and the odd linen beauty from Anavila Misra. They all hang patiently in my walk-in. I’d rather wear a salwar kameez. Or a tunic and trousers combo. The salwar kameez is often seen as a Mughal bequest. The Hindu-Muslim divide between a sari and a salwar has often been attributed to religion, even though it was geography that dictated our choice between the two. In Punjab, where my family is from, women wore salwars whether they were Hindu or Muslim. In Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, UP and Bihar, women of both religions wore saris. In Maharashtra today, young women wear salwar kameez. They graduate into wearing a sari when they get married. The salwar kameez remains the ensemble of choice for modernity. It has evolved from its anarkali-and-angrakha roots (Abu-Sandeep, Tarun Tahiliani, Varun Bahl) to a sequinned kurta with jeans (Monisha Jaising, Malini Ramani and Nandita Mahtani) to what is a tunic-trouser avatar (Abraham & Thakore). The tunic-trouser is our best bet to internationalise our fashion and heritage. You can travel the world with it and wear it for any occasion without it looking like a national dress or costume. It is as international as it is Indian. At the last ready-to-wear show of Chanel, where the showman Karl Lagerfeld set his stage like a supermarket, the outfit that caught my eye was a slim-fit coat with skinny pants, teamed with a quilted cropped jacket (pictured). If it wasn’t for the quilting and the tweed suiting, one would have sworn this was something off an Indian runway. Lagerfeld has visited this look time and again, you can break it up into seperates or wear it all together with multi-strand pearls. The salwar kameez — and its many evolutions and reinventions — gets my vote for the accurate representation of the modern Indian woman. The sari is more sentiment than style.
