Loud, clear and fashionable

I think about the clothes that I wore when I was a kid. I see the clothes being worn by kids today. As we note the differences one by one, perhaps we can get some idea of the kind of changes that have taken place over the years. Except for the generational change, I’m comparing like pretty much with like. My family and those around us then weren’t particularly poor then and we aren’t rich now; probably just gone up a notch within the middle-class range. And yet! What a sea change in attitude!

To start with, I probably acquired my first branded stuff when I was well into my 20s (or was it early 30s?). It was acquired hesitantly and with a great deal of reluctance, with money I had earned myself. My son, on the other hand, developed a taste for brands at the age of about 11 and he was probably among the last in his group.

Today’s kids grow up on brands. I suppose it’s all that relentless television drilling they are exposed to practically since birth. They know better than adults how to distinguish a fake from the real thing. And of course, the peer pressure is immense. In my time, the only competition was who would score more (whether in the class exams or at cricket). Now, things are a lot more complicated.

When I was around 11, I had three pairs of shorts and two trousers. I had four or five short-sleeved shirts, all cotton except for one which was of some new polyester material called ‘Bosky’. (I might as well admit, it was a polka-dotted shirt). I had no T-shirt that proclaimed my beliefs and attitudes. In fact, come to think of it, no T-shirt at all. No jeans. No full-sleeved shirt. No special ‘night-wear’. I wore the same shorts at night. No bathrobe. Just a flimsy towel of sorts. No belt, even! But that was how it was. We didn’t ever feel deprived.

There were no ready-mades, at least not where I lived. We chose the cloth and made our biannual trip to the tailor. My mother would tell the tailor to leave additional cloth folded in along the length because all my growth for the first two decades of my life seemed to come only lengthwise. (Ah! Those were the days). Every year or two, we would go back to the tailor to lengthen the trousers and every few years to widen its waist. Clothes seemed to last and last.

Nowadays, it’s brand or nothing. They cost plenty and yet, they are treated like casual wear and seem to last for a year or two at the most. The attitude towards spending money on clothes today is easy and nonchalant, particularly among the youth. I wonder if this attitude will change as they go along. Or is this a paradigm shift? The ‘chilled out’ new-age approach, where one lives for the day and clearly for oneself with nary a care for the morrow? The ‘credit-card generation’, as opposed to their ‘toil and save’ predecessors?

Around the time I was born, drainpipe trousers were very much in vogue. Ten years later, the era of flares took birth and kept flaring. But no, that didn’t mean people threw away their drainpipes. No! People went to the tailor to discuss ways of means of combining thrift with fashion. Will led to way and and zillions of young men started sporting the resultant, appalling solution. The tailor would insert a long, inverted V shaped piece of cloth on either side of the trouser leg from the knee downwards to introduce the flared effect. The added cloth was often of a different colour, even different material, but those were the least of one’s concerns. We had become ‘fashionable’ and we had done so at minimum expense.

I used to get new clothes twice a year. Nothing less, nothing more. Once on my birthday and once on Diwali. Today, there are so many reasons for the youth to buy clothes!

1. Sale! 2. No sale. That’s an awesome time to buy because there’s more variety. 3. I haven’t bought any since months! 4. Oh, the brand I have is so-oo yesterday. Such a fail. 6. Wo-ow! This is so cool. I mean, it’s like … epic! 7. I can’t possibly not have it! It’s got the swag! 8. It rocks. I want it. 9. Expensive, but hey, ‘YOLO’! (You only live once) Lol.

P.G. Bhaskar is the author of Corporate Carnival and Jack Patel’s Dubai Dreams