While I love the way the garments look, period, I am slightly confused by the sudden popularity amongst femmefans on LJ and at WisCon. Is there any particular impetus beyond the beauty and comfort of the garments?
I've admired salwar kameez since I don't know when. I have a Folkwearpattern for making one, though the Folkwear pattern includes the more tight-legged churridar for pants, and you have to buy a separate pattern if you want the salwar. As with so many of my sewing projects, I haven't gotten around to making it up yet.
When I was in the UK on my TAFF trip, and staying in the East End with Rob and Avedon, I was positively tortured by the beautiful dip-dyed Punjabi suits in the shop windows, but it seemed utterly pointless to ask in the shops. East Indian women tend to come up to my chin, and have bones so small that the bangles made for them that a friend brought back from India had to be given away because they wouldn't go over my hand. Even if I weren't also carrying around the excess of avoir du pois I would rate my chances of squeezing into an off-the-peg salwar kameez at approximately nil. In L.A. and Orange County, there just isn't much of a South Asian population, so even finding sari fabric, let alone a tailor who could make salwar kameez, was not readily feasible. So while for yonks I would have loved to have one, the confluence of money, and tailors, and access to same never seemed to arrive all at once.
Then Teresa Nielsen Hayden posted at Making Light about her success buying them on eBay. From eBay tailors in India and Pakistan, you can buy custom garments in your choice of fabrics made to measure, and at prices that often seem absurdly cheap. And as Teresa points out in a follow-up post, there are lots of good liberal and libertarian capitalist reasons for throwing business their way.
So I suspect that the mini-vogue you're seeing in salwar kameez is the sudden meeting of rather a lot of fannish pent-up demand as women like me discover that even if they don't live near an Indian tailor and even if they don't have a lot to spend, and even if they don't get around to all of their sewing projects, they too can enjoy the comfort and not inconsiderable elegance of salwar kameez.
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Date: 2005-07-17 11:53 pm (UTC)I've admired salwar kameez since I don't know when. I have a Folkwear pattern for making one, though the Folkwear pattern includes the more tight-legged churridar for pants, and you have to buy a separate pattern if you want the salwar. As with so many of my sewing projects, I haven't gotten around to making it up yet.
When I was in the UK on my TAFF trip, and staying in the East End with Rob and Avedon, I was positively tortured by the beautiful dip-dyed Punjabi suits in the shop windows, but it seemed utterly pointless to ask in the shops. East Indian women tend to come up to my chin, and have bones so small that the bangles made for them that a friend brought back from India had to be given away because they wouldn't go over my hand. Even if I weren't also carrying around the excess of avoir du pois I would rate my chances of squeezing into an off-the-peg salwar kameez at approximately nil. In L.A. and Orange County, there just isn't much of a South Asian population, so even finding sari fabric, let alone a tailor who could make salwar kameez, was not readily feasible. So while for yonks I would have loved to have one, the confluence of money, and tailors, and access to same never seemed to arrive all at once.
Then Teresa Nielsen Hayden posted at Making Light about her success buying them on eBay. From eBay tailors in India and Pakistan, you can buy custom garments in your choice of fabrics made to measure, and at prices that often seem absurdly cheap. And as Teresa points out in a follow-up post, there are lots of good liberal and libertarian capitalist reasons for throwing business their way.
So I suspect that the mini-vogue you're seeing in salwar kameez is the sudden meeting of rather a lot of fannish pent-up demand as women like me discover that even if they don't live near an Indian tailor and even if they don't have a lot to spend, and even if they don't get around to all of their sewing projects, they too can enjoy the comfort and not inconsiderable elegance of salwar kameez.