Assam Tribune, The

Have you noticed how the rental clothing trend is catching up? From the UK to France, Africa and even in our own big and small towns and cities, shop fascias are shouting out “rentals”. Taboo mindset begone, a friend’s daughter the other day was enquiring from where to shop the best rentals for her cousin’s wedding programmes. To paraphrase her, she was just not “keen to waste thousands” to ensure that the dresses she buys get locked in her closet till the next wedding and “I anyways will not be...

The party, read wedding, season is not over yet. There was a lull in December and now right up to April there should be someone or the other in the circle of friends and family getting married and so opportunity for you to reprise all those silks, velvets, banarsis, jacquards, organzas, tissue in all its hues, nets, sheers, shimmering metallics and the multitude of other fabrics that your closet teems with. When was the last time you wore your ‘heavy’ lehenga, mekhela, sari, gown or any other...

The bells, they are a’ ringing… Chiming in 2024 even though the last 365 days feel like yesterday. As the world continues to spin, what could be spinning out of control is the people’s race to protect the planet. 2030, 2050 are the years earmarked for industries to go ‘net zero’, and this includes the textiles-fashion-footwear-accessories sector. While the overall fashion industry globally is taking steps to achieve net zero in its practices, it is falling woefully short. There was a huge...

So, I have some lazy bums around me who want to look chic sans any effort, or rock a look with whatever’s there in the almirah (and that’s precious little, really cool I mean). If you are one of them and you have it all but just can’t put it all together, then here are some tips: First, ensure you have some basics — a couple of short and long cool tops/kurtis, stoles in various crafts like ajrakh, phulkari, ikat and a couple of prints, the evergreen white, black, fuchsia shirt, tee and dress, a...

So, what are you celebrating a week from now? Vidyaramba, Bommai Kolu, Ayudha Puja, Simollanghan, Durgotsava, Sharodotsav or Navratri Puja? Different names for the same festival celebrated with some differences, the underlying story interlinked across the regions in some way or the other. What also is one across the geographies is the colour that we could wear each day of the 9 days! The colours, intrinsic to the festival, beginning from day 1, are orange, white, red, royal blue, yellow, green...

Spectacles on the bridge of the nose, eyes crinkling whenever that malleable fine wire twists recalcitrant, 50-something Bhanu Das deftly crochets a loop, her fingers flying as she weaves a metallic string. Her husband, Jatindra Nath Das, the 65+ owner of a narrow, long and rectangular Barpetia jewellery-making workshop, mixes tiny pieces of silver with pounded wood-coal and fires it in a mud stove. Once the embers go cold, the ash will be blown away leaving behind wee balls. Four men on the...

This is the world’s first — a wine not from any vineyard but from tea gardens! And, the tea gardens of Assam. You read that right — Assam’s very own Alpana Saikia had been crafting this beverage in her kitchen for long and when she read a news item in 2017 that Jorhat’s Tocklai Tea Research Institute has proved that good wine can indeed be made from Assam's tea, retaining all its health benefits, passion and a new-found hobby merged to go for it as an entrepreneur. For this Nagaon girl, when...

Indulgent eyes almost rolled in their sockets when the tween grandchild declared that the big knee-baring asymmetrical cut-outs are “not torn! This is style!” The top the tween wore also looked like it had been worn inside out with big orange stitches along the sleeves and scattered fringes along the hem. The distressed grandma looked appealingly and I smiled back assuring that her tween wasn’t going loopy at all. This style celebrates the natural aging process of clothes and could to a certain...

If you are a manufacturer — of anything, be it apparel, footwear, accessories or anything else under the sun, this is for you. As the globe grapples with the horrors of climate change being increasingly witnessed in the form of flash floods, cloud bursts, unseasonal rain or lack of it — just some of the visible signs, industries across the spectrum are scurrying to set their processes more compatible with the planet. Of course, there is a lot of greenwashing being done too. Irrespective, ripple...

Honestly, it’s time for us to hark back to our fashion/ lifestyle of yore. A time when clothes, or for that matter, any other item, be it bedlinen, upholstery or sundry household linen survived for generations. At my mother’s place some sets of soft cotton bedsheets from a ‘trusted’ brand were used when we were kids, her grandchildren hopped along the way, and today, when she is bedridden, they are still being used, after perhaps a thousand hand and machine washes. The print, specially of the...