Tailor Tales

Angela McRobbie’s article got me thinking about an ancient form of production in India’s vast clothing industry that has somehow survived through modernization and even retooled itself to cater to contemporary desires -the neighborhood tailor who, during my grandmother’s times, was the sole spinner of sartorial tales. This ubiquitous fellow, often a wizened old man in command of a solitary sewing machine and a shop that was little more than an alcove at the street corner, was the person who tailored clothes for the entire family. Indeed, so significant was the relationship with their tailor, that families would rely on him for advice on what would look best (read: modestly appropriate) on the teenage daughter who would be attending a family wedding for the first time. I remember many sunny afternoons spent with my grandmother, devouring oranges lightly dipped in a mixture of salt and black pepper, where she would recount, misty-eyed, the glorious days of her teenage years enriched by the sheer beauty of the clothes her mother got tailored for her. So steadfast was her belief in the ‘nobility’ of getting clothes tailored versus buying unimaginative and overpriced versions from stores that even in her old age, she refused to ever wear anything that did not come from a trusted local tailor.

Things were not vastly different for my mother; she too had numerous tales of the man who tailored elaborate dresses for her –a product of the flower power generation and a Mumbai native, my mother delighted in remembrances of polka dotted tunics, bell bottomed trousers, a much beloved lilac mini and the dearest red colored A line maxi skirt embellished with gorgeous cutouts of black suede flowers (which I proudly inherited and donned, many times over, as a teenager!) all created from the magic fingers of her Master-ji (tailors in India are still called Masters, the word ‘ji’ is a suffix intended to demonstrate respect). There was nothing the man could not create from scratch and perhaps the strongest evidence of his talent lay in his ability to create ‘western’ clothes, which were not very accessible to the average middle class Indian in those times.

Today, perhaps even more than before the tailor stands as an indispensable figure, despite India’s foray into the global fashion scene documented by the mushrooming of indigenous design houses and the entry of prominent foreign labels. Indian fashion designers rely, for production purposes, on a team of tailors led by the traditional figure –the Masterji. Most of these tailors hail from villages and small cities and are skilled craftsmen in their own right. However, unable to afford setting up shop on their own or, even more, lacking the enterprise and initiative to do so, they function as the backbone of a fashion house, creating pret collections and couture creations which make their way to the most exclusive of boutique stores both in India and worldwide, earning a miserable fraction of what the outfit is likely to sell for. Others continue to work out of dilapidated storefronts and decrepit street corners, specializing in Indian wear (in opposition to my mother’s times, today western wear in India is almost universally purchased in stores), contemporarizing his trade by offering to stitch, for a fraction of the cost, the exact replica of a designer outfit –all you need is a photo and a few hundred rupees. Yet others barely eke out a living by surviving on money earned through alterations of various garments –a priceless service rendered for an abysmally low price.