Dichotomy of fashion, thread by thread

‘Dichotomy’ literally means ‘a cutting in two’. The word comes from the Greek dikhotomía— dikha (in two) and tome (to cut)—a tidy split
we often use to frame messy human realities.

Fashion is full of such splits: glamour and grief, beauty and burden. Yet the same industry also binds communities together through skill, pride, and livelihood. 

India’s textile story shows this unity across millennia. Archaeology from the Indus Valley has yielded fragments of cotton cloth at Mohenjo-daro—among the earliest evidence of a fibre and craft for which India became renowned. The world’s oldest cotton fibres, found at Mehrgarh and Mohenjo-daro, push India’s textile legacy deep into prehistory.

From there, cloth travelled along coasts and caravan routes. Surat rose as a Mughal emporium; Masulipatnam thrived on printed cottons like chintz—so prized in Europe that imports were once banned to protect local mills. Bengal’s ethereal muslins became courtly symbols, celebrated and coveted worldwide. Together, muslin and chintz powered an export engine that stitched India into global trade. From north to south, these were ecosystems of growers, dyers, weavers, and tailors—hands that turned fibre into fabric and fabric into identity.

Gandhi understood the political and moral force of these hands. Through swadeshi and the charkha, he made spinning and wearing khadi both resistance and repair: a way to reduce colonial dependence, create dignified rural work, and return the means of production to ordinary people. The spinning wheel became a symbol not of nostalgia, but of self-reliance and solidarity.

This lineage is not abstract to me—it was stitched into my childhood. My father’s suits were tailored by a Muslim family down the street, the fabric always bought from Bengaluru’s Avenue Road. My mother would choose blouse fabric from Jayanagar and take it to a rural tailor she trusted implicitly. Later, when I had my own atelier in Indiranagar, that same pattern continued—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Sikh, and Parsi artisans working side by side, each bringing their craft to the table. From measuring and cutting to basting, tailoring and finishing, it was a medley of skills and accents moving in harmony.

What seemed ordinary at the time was, in truth, extraordinary: the quiet collaboration of many hands and many faiths creating one garment—and in doing so, helping you feel like the best version of yourself.

We seldom pause to consider who actually makes the garments we wear. Not just the workers in a factory, but the whole mosaic of human effort: cotton picked in Vidarbha, threads dyed in Sircilla, silk reeled in Kanchipuram, fabric pressed in Banaras, and stitched by a tailor in Bengaluru. Hands from different castes, faiths, and communities

And here lies the irony. A politician may step onto a stage in a freshly pressed kurta, seeking to divide his audience along social, religious, or regional lines. But the garment itself embodies unity—woven, dyed, and sewn by the very communities he seeks to separate.

This is the unspoken truth of fashion: we embrace the product but erase the producer. We celebrate the look but deny the labour. We flaunt the garment while turning away from the people whose sweat, patience, and artistry brought it into being. It is a paradox as sharp as any the Greeks imagined—love for the cloth, indifference for the maker.

And yet within that contradiction lies an invitation. What if every outfit reminded us of the shared humanity stitched into it? What if the simple act of wearing became an act of recognition—that even when prejudice blinds us, our clothes betray us, revealing our hidden dependence on those who made them?

Dichotomy tempts us to split the world into halves: artisan or industry, tradition or technology, north or south, cost or craft. But textiles whisper another lesson. Warp and weft only make sense when they cross; together they create strength, pattern, and beauty. India’s textile story—from Indus Valley cotton to our everyday muslin, brocades and even Tirupur knits—shows that refusing to choose a single thread is our greatest inheritance. 

In the quiet labour behind every shirt or sari lies a truth we ignore: that humanity is woven together, whether or not we choose to see it – many communities, many histories, many futures, all interlaced. The real story isn’t a dichotomy at all. It is a braid—of labour and love, memory and innovation—binding us to one another every time we button a shirt, drape a sari, or lift a veil.

(The writer is a fashion environmentalist collaborating with the United Nations and World Bank on fashion and sustainability)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/golds-rally-sparks-fomo-should-investors-chase-or-pause-3754002