Features

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...

A hundred thousand visitors is a big number for a trade show, especially when most of them were ones making a frantic beeline to attend the event as business visitors. That's how big the last ITMA Asia + CITME 2016 at Shanghai, China was. The latest edition of the bi-annual five-day event that gets under way on October 15 at the National Exhibition and Convention Centre in China's biggest city and commercial hub is expected to relegate those numbers to the history books. It is, to bluntly state...

The textiles-apparel-fashion world is in a flux, and it needs to figure out a number of things. First, it needs be truly sustainable in that processes of production to those of disposal stay circular. And then, it needs to brace up for a change—one that is already under way in ways that few understand fully as yet. But that is only the beginning of the problem—for, all sustainability endeavours will need to be in sync with Industry 4.0, or Textiles 4.0 as many in industry would want to refer to...

In the fashion industry, they warn you, every new day brings in a new set of problems /challenges. Some of these are new in nature, others are newly-discovered, so to speak. One of the latest, arguably the biggest of them all, is one that of microfibre contamination. The subject had been known for a while, but it is only now that the magnitude of the issue has become a topic of debate and, yes, a major concern. The textiles-apparel-fashion industry has had the dubious honour of being the biggest...

It’s tricky—many would even say fallacious—trying to club together all the five states and one union territory in what is referred to as South India. For geopolitical purposes, maybe one can, and one often does too. But presenting an overview of the textiles industry of South India is fraught to be specious. So, let’s say this is only one way of presenting the voices of industry from a geographical region that otherwise would get drowned in the din and clamour of the Indian textiles industry...

Those were once perceived as only functional elementary necessities that no one needed to talk about or give second thoughts to. But today, they are used to assert style statements. That's how much the sheer concept of intimatewear itself has changed. These days, the term ‘intimatewear’ connotes one of those handful of product ranges that are both a necessity and luxury. The once-traditional intimatewear market that was underlined by abysmal production quality and desultory promotions is now...