Ram Annamalai Thennaapan: The Traditional Indian

Indian traditional wear is one which has gathered the appreciation all over the world for its distinctive styles and vibrant colours. This rich culture where every colour has its own significance, has its distinctive fashion every 50 to 100 miles geographically throughout India. For the Indians who leave their homes behind, traditional clothes and cuisine is something looked forward to for comfort. Besides that wearing one’s traditional outfit makes one proud of being from the Indian culture and it definitely the case regarding  these models.

Some outfits depicts a girl who is on her regular day probably at work/home. Some outfits are more embellished and gives a sense of importance to the event to which it is worn, a party or a formal event.  Other styles with similar kinds of clothes with minor variations can be used on a man as well.

The important thing to notice in all of these fashions is the use of  unstitched cloth. For the women, it is used mainly as scarves and in certain occasions it is used to drape around the whole body in the form of a saree. And used by men as a sort of pant. Yes, the “pants” worn by men in most traditional functions is almost never stitched. It is one piece of cloth.

This fashion arises from texts which says that if you loosen up your body to a well enough extent and the clothes that are worn aren’t constricting, it enables your life to flow through you.  Modern science says wearing loose clothes improves blood flow through the body and it is only a matter of time before the rest is proven also.

 

Photography and Text by Ram Annamalai Thennaapan, Copyright 2015