Originally thrived from New York's hip-hop culture in the 1970s, street fashion has emerged into almost every urban city in the world nowadays. Asian streetwear gained influence in the global street fashion scene in the 1990s and is now seen as a re-emergence due to the influence and popularity of Korean and Japanese pop culture. However, many cities across Asia have only recently begun to develop streetwear culture and brands.
India being a post-colonial country, streetwear and fashion is a hybrid culture of combining traditional and western clothing. American fashion blogger and photographer Scott Schuman visited several cities in India: New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Pondicherry to learn more about this culture. He observed how people of different social classes and circumstances he encountered made "informed personal decisions about the clothes they wore." In both urban cities and rural communities alike, there seems to be a sense of pride in dressing up and a driving force of using the most out of the limited resources one has. Schuman remarked on the unusual combination of people pairing a lungi w ith a jacket. Indian fashion designers, bloggers and enthusiasts have also been highly supportive of the emergence of this culture. According to Harsha Biswajit, who is the co-founder of the streetwear brand BISKIT, “the cool thing about streetwear is that it can be anything.” Biswajit started his unisex label with the aim of exploring the boundaries between fashion, art, photography and design.
Streetwear has always been influenced by popular culture and vice versa. When it comes to Indian cities, the emergence of hip-hop culture in the past decade has greatly promoted the creation of streetwear brands and culture. Some of the newly established streetwear brands are Delhiwear, that employs an 'anti-trend' aesthetic, the Vardi collection that aims “to pay respect to the most underrated streetwear in India” and Dukaan, which is inspired by "life in Delhi and growing up in block printed kurtas that we wore with Jordans." Many have already established clothing brands and began to associate themselves with hip-hop culture and have dabbled with its growing influence of streetwear fashion.
Street fashion in India may not be as developed as it is in other parts of the world or even other parts of Asia. However, its impact has been steadily growing and influencing the fashion industry and the culture of the country. It is becoming extremely common for Indian celebrities to wear homegrown brands and endorse them, as well as for the youth to be involved in this emergement within the context of their own country and popular culture.
“VARDI - A Collection by Delhiwear which represents the simplicity of daily Indian Styled clothes” via https://delhiwear.com/
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Written by Ishita Bahl from New Delhi, India
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