SAREE. NOT SORRY.IN GRAPHIC DETAIL

The traditional Indian drape made headlines recently, as it was unwittingly dragged into a inter-continental political argument. But for the 5000 year old garment, that’s just another day in the life of the humble saree. By Delshad Irani

THE BACK

STORY

Mind Your BlouseAccording to historical records and reports, the traditional Bengali style of wearing sarees - without a blouse - was too hot to handle for the Victorians. Tropical climates notwithstanding. In fact, Jnanadanandini Debi, Rabindranath Tagore’s sister-in-law, was denied entry to clubs for wearing a saree draped over her bare breasts. The way it was done for centuries. The old way however gave way to styles more acceptable to hyper-sensitive English sensibilities. Soon sarees worn with blouses, shirts, petticoats, etc, became the norm and the fashion during the British Raj.

Who wore it first?Historians have pegged its age at roughly 5000 years. The earliest representation of the popular South Asian apparel is an Indus Valley statue of a woman draped in a cloth. Some records indicate the saree’s philosophical origins lie in the Hindu belief of wearing a single, stitch-less garment.

Over the centuries the saree has proven to be the world’s most versatile garment. Not only is there a saree for every occasion, it also can double up as bedsheet, towel, wash cloth, dust rags, shawl or sarong and swing or sling for babies. In poorer sections of society, sarees on their absolute last leg are used as menstrual cloth.

The saree has been the apparel of choice of royal highnesses and the help, politicians, police, flight attendants, women at every level in the service industry and CEOs. Worn on occasions like posh soirees or to scrub floors, at college graduations and weddings, by mothers and their daughters. The saree is a truly democratic apparel.

IN NUMBERS

Counting the various types and styles of sarees everywhere – India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, there are well over a 100 types of sarees and ways of draping.

Saree lengths range from 4.5 to 8 meters ie five to nine yards. (That’s roughly3.5 Sun Mingmings, the world tallest professional basketball player, stacked up.)

Patan Patola, a rare, handcrafted Gujarati sari retails for anything from ̀ 1.5 lakh to 3 lakh.It’s a favourite of Kokilaben Ambani and actor Kiron KherThey’re not all bulky though. The

Sircilla saree from Karimnagar in Telangana can fit into a large match box.

A Kerala saree has 4500 threads.Weavers count the threads because the slightest miscalculation might affectthe lengthand breadthof the cloth.

While the Indian saree market is highly unorganised, some

(conservative) estimates peg it

at$15 billion (2016)

#SareeSwag

Jayalalithaa’s 10,500 sarees, of which 750 are of silk and gold, still lie in a city civil court, along with the rest of the late politician’s seized assets, guarded by Karnataka police.

Till a few month ago, India held the record for the longest saree in the world. Gujarat officials created a 3.055 km long saree in honor of Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s visit to Bharuch.

UNITED BY YARDS FASHION AND POLITICS

#ForGoodThe saree has become a focal

point for organizations and companies looking to do some good in the world. Established in 1999, the non-profit Goonj collects hundreds of sarees

which it then distributes to women who can’t afford to buy sarees for work or weddings. Some of the sarees donated come from group like The Sareal Pact, started in 2015, which encourages

people to donate at least 3 sarees a year. There’s a saree lending library in Ahmedabad where

women can rent sarees for as little as ̀ 25.

Startups like The Registry of Sarees(founded in 2016) and Ethicus, a “farm to fashion

initiative” established in 2009, are helping to revive traditional saree weaving comminutes

while creating renewed interest amongyounger, fashion forward Indian women. Each

Ethicus sari, for instance, comes with a tag featuring the weaver’s photograph, name, age

and the number of days it took to weave the sari. Thus emphasizing its artisanal roots and bringing

creators closer to consumers.Which, interestingly, also makes it

rather hipster-friendly.

One of the world’s most famous sarees is also its simplest. Saint Teresa’s white saree with three blue borders is the Intellectual Property of the Missionaries Of Charity, the order of nuns Mother Teresa belonged to. It trademarked after “unfair usage of the design across the globe”.

Sarees and Saints

From time to time, people get their sarees in a twist. There was actor and TV personality Mandira Bedi’s famous tricolour-theme saree in 2007, worn on air for a match between Sri Lanka and Australia. Her counterpart Raveena Tandon, had it worse, given that in 2017 we have a little something called Twitter. In July this year, she tweeted: “A saree day ... will I be termed communal,Sanghi, bhakt, Hindutva icon? If I say I love wearing the saree and I think it’s the most elegant.” The saree has been draped and dragged into the thick of political debates from time to time. A recent New York Times piece titled ‘In India, fashion has become a nationalist cause’ riled up the tweeting masses in the country and even prompted rebuttals with titles like ‘The New York Times tried to explain sari fashion — and became the laughing stock of India’.

The new record is 3.2 km. The saree was worn by a bride in central Sri Lanka. Over 250 children were used to hold the two mile long train. Currently the case is under investigation for the use of child labour.

A Chennai Silks saree sold for ̀ 3,931,627.Features reproductions of 11 paintings by the celebrated Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma

World’s Most

Expensive Saree

The Drape Unraveled

A slit in timeSeveral countries away, a Canadian magazine featured on its cover a Tamil bride in a traditional saree with a thigh high slit. Some loved it, others thought it disrespectful. The jury’s still split. Across the border, a US woman wore different saris and posted the pictures on social media in a unique protest against Donald Trump’s policies on immigrants and inclusivity, or the lack thereof.

Why go online first…As per EY Analysis, data gathered from January to March 2017, India’s retail sector is set to continue its double-digit growth on the back of rising disposable incomes, rapid urbanisation and the growth of organised and internet retailing. Fashion (apparel and footwear), the largest segment, is pro-jected to grow at a healthy CAGR of 13% dur-ing 2015-2020 from ̀ 4 trillion in 2015.

Baqar Naqvi, business director, Wazir Advisors, points out that online retail cur-rently contributes about 5%-6% to the total apparel market, but this is expected to grow to about 30% over the next decade. Online retailers are pushing the category, driven by higher margins and buying frequency, and are also credited with, for better or worse, coming up with a 24/7/365 sale cycle.

Considering the accessibility e-com-merce could bring to the table and the ex-pense involved in physical distribution, actors like Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone, rolled out brands, HRX and All About You, respectively, on fashion-portal Myntra first.

HRX co-founder and CEO Afsar Zaidi, believes “There is a heightened interest in the everyday lives of celebrities be-cause today there is easy access to their fashion choices and lifestyle through proliferating social media presence.”

While Naqvi admits all channels will eventually have to be deployed, he be-lieves, “To start off, online is a great medium to test the market with mini-mal risk.”

…When you can go offline first?And yet there’s evidence that an of-fline first approach can also yield rich dividends: depending on, among other things, the star run-ning the show. Among the first actors to make a dent in the appar-el space was Salman Khan with Being Human. Today, ca-sual wear products from the brand can be spotted across 600 points-of-sale globally, with tier II and III markets becoming a core fo-cus area. An ecom-merce platform is also on the cards.

I n F e b r u a r y this year, Rheson, launched by Sonam Kapoor and her sis-ter Rhea, also took the traditional route first via Shoppers Stop. Their collection was soon part of the store’s ecommerce of fering.

After a few months, the duo decided to be present on Amazon as well.

Govind Shrikhande, customer care as-sociate and managing director, Shoppers Stop, observes, ever since the 80s and 90s, superstar styles have morphed into full-blown megatrends. So, celebrities’ impact on fashion is undeniable. He also points out, “Our customer insight revealed that while people want to emulate their favou-rite celebrities’ style, it was often inacces-sible or unaffordable.”

Hence, Rheson’s next top priority is to penetrate the brand across the country, especially in the tier II and III markets, establishing the fact that the products are affordable.

However, the key challenge is building a retail business rather than just a brand, says Pinakiranjan Mishra, partner and na-tional leader, consumer products and retail, EY. He adds, “The other challenge for the celebrities would be to keep up the creative interest and launch new products/designs that excite consumers in parallel with their other professional obligations.” Ashish Mishra, managing director Interbrand highlights a fundamental challenge the celeb-driven brands need to address: “They ought to be careful about everything from a mismatch between their personal brand equities and the segment choice drivers, to absence of clarity, focus and operational plans. Understanding a clear market need gap and managing their brand equity is im-portant,” he says.

priyanka.nair@timesinternet.com

Continued from Page 1 >>

More Than Just A Pretty Face

“I realised long ago that skirts are hopeless. Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a skirt, I say,

‘Try one. Try a skirt.’” ” - Katharine Hepburn, actor

Realising the growth opportu-nity, companies are even sticking their necks out to create a separate innerwear vertical to bring focus to the category.

Aditya Birla Fashion, a leading apparel and fashion player, made a full-fledged foray into the segment last year via Van Heusen starting with a test market down South. Basis the positive response – re-port cards on brand performance are issued monthly – the brand has now launched in the West and North. The full-fledged rollout has been backed by extensive market research on the pain-points of the category and innovations like anti-bacterial innerwear, metal-lic waist bands, etc says Puneet Kumar Malik, COO, Innerwear Business, ABF.

Even as the debate rages wheth-er cool guys show (or don’t show) their underwear elastic anymore, there is frantic activity among brands at both premium as well as mass level. And the player with the

most muscle traversing both cat-egories, Jockey, continues build-ing on its early-mover advantage. The brand with an over ̀ 1000 crore plus presence in the men’s inner-wear segment has created a space for itself without any celeb-play and is amongst the multination-als’ biggest franchises globally. “We are not very perturbed about new players in the room”, says M C Cariappa, president, sales and marketing - Jockey India, current-ly on the journey to transform the brand into a full-fledged apparel player. The brand is unequivocal about the product being the hero. Says Cariappa, “Our advertising-imagery may appear plain-vanilla to many, since we do not take po-

sitions nor do we tell people what to do but that is the way we are as a brand.” It seems to have worked so far for the Indian outpost of the family-owned Wisconsin head-quartered company.

Celeb-fixation remains a preva-lent phenomenon especially in the mass-segment. As per Raghu Bhat of Scarecrow, the agency behind Rupa, what works is high-impact frequency-building 10 second TV commercials, allied with hyper-local hoardings, shop-fronts, cinemas and POS, and from a communication perspective, a combination of a celebrity and a consumer-facing crowd-pleasing tagline. Thus, everyone from Sunny Deol, Suneil Shetty, Ajay Devgn, Varun Dhawan, to Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Akshay Kumar to even Amitabh Bachchan have lent their face to some innerwear company or the other.

As the country gets younger, innerwear for a certain segment seems to be moving from a low involvement category to a much more involved space. Arvind Krishnan, managing director,

in this segment utility trumps identity mostly, he hopes to see an ecommerce play in men’s in-nerwear sometime soon — per-haps via a subscription model. Meanwhile we are told by sources on condition of anonymity that the ubiquitous Baba Ramdev is soon to launch his range of under-wear with a pure-Indian brand name. Now that may just change the way India wears its briefs.

amit.bapna@timesgroup.com

The Young InvestorLatest to join the celebrity investor club is actress Alia Bhatt, who picked up a minority stake in fashion-tech startup StyleCracker, for an un-disclosed amount. Dhimaan Shah, co-founder and managing director, StyleCracker, informs that Bhatt will be involved in the strategy, business and other aspects of the company. “Alia is an investor as much as any of our other investors are. The nature of this association is not a brand ambassador role, neither is it an endorsement,” he says.

Hrithik Roshan On Building A Fashion BizIn a quick chat with BE’s Priyanka Nair, the Bollywood actor explains why he considers HRK “a philoso-phy, and not fashion.”

Why did you choose fashion as a market

to put your monies on?HRX has been conceived and created

to serve as a platform for bringing like-

minded people together. It has a purpose:

helping people become better versions

of themselves with sustained effort and a

strong belief.

A bunch of visionaries saw potential in

the Indian landscape for a homegrown

sportswear brand, research established

the faith and I went ahead and took the

leap of faith, which has paid off well and

will in perpetuity, because, as I said, HRX is

about crafting a culture of fit living and not

creating a fashion trend.

HRX was launched as an online brand.

What plans to reach the offline market?

Offline is very much a part of the strategy

and a natural progression.The process of identification of the right

retail partners for MBOs and availability

of the right locations for EBOs has begun.

The target looks like the festive season of

2018.

You have also collaborated with Xiaomi

to launch a variant of the MI Band. How

did that collaboration come about?

Fashion and fitness form the two most

important pillars of HRX, and technology

is the obvious underlying layer for a con-

temporary and relevant brand.

In today’s fast-paced life, it definitely helps

to track your moves and plan your fitness

routine for the day. A lot of commitment

is required while keeping up a healthy

regime, therefore, a fitness tracker is the

first step to help maintain discipline.

FASHION (APPAREL AND FOOTWEAR), THE LARGEST SEGMENT, IS PROJECTED TO GROW AT A HEALTHY CAGR OF 13% DURING 2015-2020 FROM ̀ 4 TRILLION IN 2015

(L-R) Dhimaan Shah, Alia Bhatt, and Archana Walavalkar

In the inner-wear segment, it doesn’t take the trade a long time to give the brand’s report card Puneet Kumar Malik, COO, Innerwear Business, ABFR

CK, Tommy, Jockey, Hanes, UCB, Levis, FCUK

Jockey, Hanes, Macroman, ONN, Cruso, Zoiro, Park Avenue, Levis, Chromozome, FCUK, UCB, Fruit of the Loom

Hanes, VIP, Euro, Lux, Rupa, Amul, Dollar, Dixcy Scott

SUPER PREMIUM

Price Point Market Size

PREMIUM

ECONOMY

MEDIUM

LOW

`400 cr

2̀100cr

2̀100cr

2̀400cr

`600cr

>`350

`200 – ̀ 350

`50 – ̀ 100

`100 – ̀ 200

`35 – ̀ 50

Jockey, Hanes, Macroman, ONN, Crusoe, Zoiro, Park Avenue, Levis, Chromozome

VIP, Rupa, Dixcy, Lux, Amul, Dollar + Unbranded local players

(SOURCE: INDUSTRY DATA)

Briefl y...

BRIEF STATSPresence of brands in different segments

A still from Kmart and Joe Boxer commercial ‘Jingle Bells’

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OTO

S: G

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GLE

/ W

IKIM

EDIA

Famous potrait of Maharani Gayatri Devi by Cecil Beaton

Indira Gandhi

Kangana Ranaut

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