Features

There is such a term called a “creeping normality”. The expression was coined by American scientist Jared Diamond in his 2005 bestseller, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. He had touched upon the subject earlier too “while attempting to explain why, in the course of long-term environmental degradation, Easter Island natives would, seemingly irrationally, chop down the last tree.” The concept is put succinctly in the Wikipedia entry on the subject: Creeping normality (also called...

Business processes in every industry sector are unique. Technology is changing the way these business processes crystallise, mutate and are reborn again to keep pace with everything else in that industry sector. But each industry has its own singularities and needs. This demonstrably poses challenges to tackle which the textiles-apparel-fashion industry needs to look outwards. Challenges Galore The biggest challenge, according to Kate Munro, vice-president for marketing at Bamboo Rose, is the...

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them. — Horace The earliest known shoes are said to be a pair of sagebrush bark sandals that date from 8000 BC—found in a cave in the US state of Oregon in 1938. The world's oldest leather shoe, on the other hand, that was possibly handcrafted from a single piece of cowhide laced with a leather cord along seams at the front and back, was unearthed from another cave...

To look at South India from the standpoint of the textiles and apparel industry would be a fallacy—for one might invariably start with the idle assumption that it is a composite ecosystem on its own. But then, it is anything but that. The five states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana differ from one another in innumerable ways—right from having their own respective textiles policies to the multifarious sectors of the industry that contribute to the overall Indian...

There are some ideas that never click with the public at first. An American machine salesman and engineer by the name if Whitcomb Judson learnt it the hard way in 1893. He worked on—what was described as—a “clasp locker” and launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture his new device. The clasp locker made its debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but saw little success. Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-American electrical engineer, was hired to work for the Universal Fastener Company in...

The suitings segment is one that remains small—almost niche, in a way. It has been so since, say, the 1970s. It has also seen a considerable amount of turbulence—many of the well-known brands that often saw film stars and cricketers endorsing them had almost disappeared a few years ago, as have some companies. But let’s leaves names aside, for they are not germane to the discussion here. What is, nevertheless, pertinent is how players in the suitings arena are dealing with changes in lifestyles...

What is obvious and in plain sight often escapes attention—if you are not looking for it. Home textiles, or home fashion to put it broadly, is something like that. Most of what constitutes home textiles—like bed linen, kitchen linen and bath linen—are used by most people, though the amounts spent on them vary drastically and depend on the means that people have. The “fashion” element, as it were, is a relatively new angle to the concept. After all, human beings have used such textile items since...

Just talking about trends is one thing; seeing them implemented is quite another. The most far-reaching, yet possibly one of the least talked about, was the crackdown of the Chinese government on polluting factories. Numbers do not easily trickle out of China, but whatever did about a year back ought to have had the global textiles and apparel industry discussing it furiously. In October 2017, many international news establishments reported that over 80,000 polluting units across 30 provinces...

The global apparel trade is made up very broadly of two types of countries—the big brothers like China, India and the United States, and the much smaller ones like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and others. The latter bloc constituents are similar in nature: they are sure-shot small and hardly grow any cotton worth the name; and their economies are heavily dependent on exports, and in turn on the West. Of these small countries, there is one that stands out: Sri Lanka. The tiny island nation off...

It’s a story that began in the back of the beyond at the start of the millennium—somewhere in Peru. The abject poverty, that he might have only have heard of till then and was only to now witness first -hand, shook the bespectacled young man to his core. That set him thinking, and travelling. He took to a path less travelled, and is today showing the world that it can indeed be done—when the entire world of textiles-apparel-fashion is caught up in lofty theories on how to go about it. Barely...