Let’s Celebrate Our Traditional Wear This Festive Season!

Dear Readers,

We’ve entered into our favourite time of the year – the exciting and fun, ‘lagan-and-navjote’ season. The best part of these much-awaited festivities, (apart from the food, of course!) is the opportunity to getting to meet with other community members through these auspicious occasions, renewing and re-strengthening our community’s cultural bonds and camaraderie. And we get to flaunt our finest outfits, especially our traditional wear with our lovely ladies donning saris with gorgeous garas and our handsome men flashing those dashing daglis and phenomenal Phetas.

What could be more welcoming and heart-warming than entering a venue to see the major part of the crowd brandishing our amazing, traditional outfits! It fills us with pride and belonging. The heart smileth when we see families dressed in our elegant, traditional ensembles. Did you know that there’s a dedicated study on ‘Fashion Psychology’, aimed at analysing the impact of our choice of clothing on us – on all levels, personal, professional as also cultural/traditional.

As per Fashion Psychologist – Dawnn Karen, the founder of ‘Fashion Psychology Institute’ (New York), our choice of clothing has a strong psychological impact on us as well as those around us – this includes diverse outcomes, right from redefining the ‘beauty’ stereotype, to using the power of fashion to nurture healthy cultural and traditional perceptions and practices.

Culture is not passed down generations by what we say to our youngsters – it is taught in the form of actions and shared experiences. Across all cultures, it is traditional-wear which helps identify one race or tribe from another, and they wear it with the greatest sense of privilege and pride. Us Parsis too should proudly celebrate our unique and exquisite traditional wear, but one doesn’t get to see this often, these days. Let there not come a time, when Parsi ‘Traditional Wear’ gets fashioned into the question, ‘Traditional… where??’

Have a lovely weekend!

– Anahita

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