Before I came back to India, I thought getting clothes here would be relatively easy--I got a great pair of pants here last time. In other posts, I've discussed how I was too big and the wrong complexion for ready-made clothes. Also, Western clothes tend to be of poor quality and/or expensive (for example I bought a great pair of jeans for $30 US).
Please Shoot Me.
Although I found a simple dress a few days before Christmas, I hesitated to buy it because it had a bad zipper, and when I went back Christmas night, it had sold. I shopped around for a while for dresses and shoes and found nothing except more bad zippers. My friend H agreed to take me shopping the next day since I didn't have much time.
I spent about six hours riding and walking around Bangalore, trying on poorly made, over-priced, wrongly-proportioned garments, one of which I got stuck in and had to have help escaping. In another shop, an alarmed shop keeper blurted "No--it is too small!" when H handed a cute dress to me. Even 15 pounds lighter, I'm still too big for Bangalore.
NONE of the ready-made Western dresses looked great, and all of them were $100-$1000 USD, most I wouldn't pay $30 for at Ross. Shoes were a complete loss. I'm
waiting until I get to China, rather than spending $30-50 USD on ill-fitting, REALLY poorly made plastic crap in styles that are either terrible or ill-suited to the freezing weather in Beijing. I would have paid a couple hundred dollars for a pair of good closed-toe heels--shoes are something I try to buy infrequently and of high quality--but you can't find them here.
Why to buy ready-made clothes
I ended hiring a tailor to make a dress. It seems like having clothes custom-made should be kind of fun and end up fitting perfectly, in addition to being less expensive than ready-made items. Unfortunately, the tailor doesn't come to you, you have to know what you want, and you have to make a lot of trips. I had to make three trips to the tailor, plus a side trip to get the fabric.
H made the process as easy as she could--she knew the tailors and where they were, asked the right questions, etc. Her tailor wasn't available, so we went to Commercial Street to try two others. The nicer, more expensive tailor was too booked for New Year's, so we had to go to the second choice, a mother and daughter whom H doesn't like much (with good reason) but who had time before I left for China.
The first trip was while we were already on Commercial Street. I told her what I wanted, got specs for acceptable fabric type (plain silk only), get initial measurements taken, run out and buy fabric and bring it back, have detailed measurements taken, and then run out to get the liner fabric and bring it back because she didn't mention liners in the first place. All of that took about 90 minutes (plenty of fabric stores on Commercial Street, fortunately). The fabric cost about $15-20, and the stitching cost about $30. I spent another $10 on auto rides.
The daughter called me back Friday to have a fitting, where I had them raise the midriff band and take in the bodice a small amount. I tried to be friendly but efficient, pointing out that raising the band would deemphasize the width of my ribcage. She ignored me, had me get out of the dress, and I moved on. That second trip only took 20 minutes plus an hour's worth of to and fro. The mother called me the next day to say the dress was ready. I returned a third time to pick up the dress, which took TWO HOURS, not including the 90 minutes to get there and back.
"I am not an animal!"
Many of you may not realize that I have a large ribcage (that's not a euphemism). It happens to be less tapered than a normal ribcage. Though the tailor took measurements of my ribcage at many points, when I tried on the finished dress, I had to have someone else zip it and couldn't breath. I gave it back to the shop owner's mother, and she snapped at the tailor to retake my measurements and let the seams out. I sat down in the shop and worked for a while.
When the dress came back, I tried it on and it fit fine around the ribcage, but the fall in the back looked goofy. I sent the dress back for adjustment and sat down to work again. Durign this time, I overheard the shop owner's mother talk to her staff and to customers. She was sweet as honey to the customers (until the topic of money came up), and as rude and disdainful of her staff as she could be. At one point, she tossed an empty bag at a woman on the floor who was hand-sewing beads onto a top. The owner's mother could have set the bag aside, or even tossed it next to her, but she seemed to make a little extra effort to put the bag in the way of the woman doing the beading. I'm not sure if I've ever seen anybody so deliberately express the concept of someone's "station."
Third Time's The Charm?
The a different tailor came back with the dress. The fall in the fall in the back was fixed, but the zipper split when I put it on, and the sides looked asymmetric . The mother, looking annoyed at this point, sent the tailor into the nearest work room to fix the dress. He then carefully pressed the dress to fix the lop-sided appearance. The mother put the dress into a plastic bag to indicate that no more adjustments would be made. I took the dress out of the bag and tried it again.
The dress fit well enough that I took it, since I wanted to get home and/or to GK and the mother wasn't going to be able to do much more with it. The dress it mediocre--I probably should have used the brocade pattern for an accent band only. Tiny stitch holes are in the silk, and it still doesn't fit me that well. I'll have to have the seams let out when I get home, since it seems unlikely that I'll stay this thin. After seeing how they treated the staff, even if the dress had been perfect, I don't think I would go back. Instead, I'll go to H's preferred tailor and have shirts and pants made at reasonable prices, and I'll be able to give them shirts I already own as a pattern.
H made me matching brass jewelry that is much better than the dress. It'll only stay bright for a few weeks, but it's very cute and well-matched!
