30-Apr-19 06:34 PM
Pratima Singh
Women are scrutinized minutely, not only for their professional achievements but their body language, eating habits, their relationships and yes – their clothes. This is life in a contemporary Indian set up, where ‘the choices she makes every day’ go under a social scanner.
We get dressed every morning and that’s the sweet spot where our public persona meets the private. It’s not an embarrassment or an affront but a reality – an enormous opportunity to rethink and redefine what being ‘you’ means.
We’ve been effectively buying into the idea that for a woman to make a place for herself in a man’s world, she has to dress like one too. Tweaking the male uniform by expanding the color range while keeping the traditional framework intact has been a short cut to ‘power dressing’ for years.
But power dressing today is about being individualistic, it is beyond suits, shirts, tailored pants or any other piece of garment that fits into the traditional norm of a ‘boss persona’. Today, it is about confidently wearing saris, kurtas and various other Indian garments that don’t make you look or feel like a ‘behen ji’. This segment is no longer looked at the way how our past generations did. The age old classics are getting a modern do-over and more and more women today are taking the ethnic route to feel more comfortable and confident.
Wearing Indian outfits to work or college is giving young girls and women the permission to accept that just because they want to wear something that looks less like a corporate armor; it doesn’t mean they are not highly intelligent, discerning and modern.
It’s time to rethink, restyle and re-imagine a millennial woman’s wardrobe that’s equal parts chic, stylish, practical and free from stereotypes of the mind and cultural conditioning.
Here is our tribute to being individualistic, bold and free – IndyaEveryday