Fashion and Manipur 1

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Fashion and Manipur
Part - 1

Yengkhom Devson *

"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening."
- Coco Chanel

Fashion is a word that strikes our mind with images of glamour and beautiful designs. It has become a conscious debate amongst our new generation. It has been defined in many ways with vagueness and taboo. Some term it as useless and some as a must. So, what is FASHION really about?

Fashion is a conscious portray of ones mind through different medium in its current time. It has no limitation in what so ever. It's an art that tries to give beauty a definition and an art to bring new ideas and changes to accommodate our ever changing mindset. It's us which gives a communal look through FASHION among human beings. So it's a word that also defines division. The term "fashion" is also sometimes used in a negative sense, as a synonym for fads, trends, and materialism.

Fashion comes in different forms, shapes and debates. It has no limitation; it goes wherever our creativity takes it. It can be in clothing, accessories, technology, cosmetics, language, mindset etc. (though we tend to give different names). It has been and will always be a part of us. Fashion is not only about wearing an expensive dress or accessories etc.

It's about accommodating yourself in the existing time with whatever you have in your own comfort level to give your conscious mind of making yourself feel good, relax, and create attention or statement with confidence and comfort. Whatever you are dressed up with; it will categorize you into which fashion group you belong to.

For example; you will be able to distinguish the dress pattern of a rickshaw driver and a coolie. Just like the same jeans and T-shirts worn by two different individual will not be the same and will categorize them into different groups of what we usually say pakchaba (Fashionable) and pakchadaba(Unfashionable) Fashion is in everything but it depends on how we treat it.

And it's also a medium that differentiates the mindset of one another, thus creating groups and division. It's a process existing in every society. So, we can say Fashion is a global phenomenon.

DO WE NEED FASHION?

We always have been and are part of Fashion. It depends on each individual how he or she uses her conscious mind to work for themselves. There is no question about the need of fashion. A mind which doesn't want to be in fashion is already a part of fashion too.

So criticism amongst the youth is an indication of the existence of choice in FASHION and its involvement in everyday life. It's about being involved with the present condition of psychological understanding of the society.

MANIPUR FASHION:

Manipur Fashion is being bombarded everyday and continuously with Foreign Fashion. And we are making use of it to fill the vacuum of our own state fashion. It has become a medium to portray one's mind and individuality in different level of understanding.

The reasons:

Fashion needs to be a gradual process of development through trial, experimentation and error with our existing designs, mindset and influence from within or outside to give the present changing mind a space or freedom that is suitable to our culture, economy, society and climatic condition.

This gradual process was being slowed down in our society like many other parts of India, by the course of political turmoil, uneven process of certain development in context to fashion, in the past three decade history of Manipur. There has been enough incident in the history of Manipur, disturbances and unrest that has not given much scope to the development of our fashion. It includes our generations of lack of conscious understanding to the need of fashion.

During this course of slow process, there has been lots of outside influence on the other sector of our society like education, science, technology, politics, economy reforms etc. and many more in different fronts that a normal person can upgrade to equip for the present competitive world.

Here we all have developed and expanded the horizon of our mind in a lesser time and more advanced than the surrounding we are in. So when we start looking for the right medium of dress/clothing or accessories etc. that can express our own new individuality and that suits the working environment, we can't find any of our suitable fashion garments and products. So the best way to accommodate the evolved individuals with the new changing surrounding and personality is the one in front of your eyes.

So, we start looking and accepting fashion of the developed parts of the world through the influence of TV, movies, medias (like the Indian Bollywood and the Hollywood) Western and new culture and fashion. Ultimately it leads to fast adaptation with the easy access and availability.

Thus, while adapting it, it started giving a conflicting Fashion statement to the mentality and the culture of our society, and created more chaos and misunderstanding amongst different generations. Fashion and disagreement has been going side by side since time immortal. It will continue to be, it's a part of ones evolvement and search for an answer.

We have given lots of vacuum in the gradual development of our own fashion. That's the result we are seeing in the present scenario, like few groups who value our culture has started imposing dress code. It wouldn't have been necessary had we had this gradual process. And I am very happy to see the care and interest shown in preserving our culture.

So had we had variations on phanek that is sporty, formal, casual stylist and many more that suits our present working environment and mind set, I think there will not have been much of an issue of dress code imposition as there will be willingness to wear it.

We can also have variations in pheijom, khudei etc. It's just that we have fewer professionals to experiment with our designs. For example I created a phanek that has pockets and lessen the hassle of wearing the phanek in a bulky way, giving a proper and elegant shape to ones figure. (There was quite a good response. It's unable to implement in larger scale because of my own involvement in my other projects wish to do so in future. Might be someone comes out with it will be great.)

The solution is not imposition of dress code that will help in preserving our culture. We need to start giving professional training and understanding to our already illiterate and misguided people of Manipur in Fashion and Arts to start our own movement. It doesn't imply only in fashion but also in different arts of Manipur.

We can give our uniqueness with originality and quality to the world. Let's try for a change, why not give them a new fashion from us for once. We have been following what ever they throw us. Now let's give them something from ours too.

To be continued ....

Read about Profile of Yengkhom Devson.

* Yengkhom Devson, an NIFT, Mumbai Graduate & Women’s Avant Garde 2003 Award winner contributes regularly to e-pao.net . This talented Fashion Designer can be reached at devsonyengs(at)yahoo(dot)com . This article was webcasted on May 27th 2007.

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