Dressing for Five Occasions in Three Weeks

The festive season presents a specific and under-discussed problem: five occasions inside three weeks, largely the same people at all of them, and photographs from every one. Most people solve it by buying five outfits, wearing each once, and then owning five outfits they associate with a single fortnight.

The better solution is three pieces that re-style. A heavily worked lehenga skirt with two entirely different blouses and dupattas reads as two outfits and costs considerably less than two. A bandhgala worn over a kurta at one event and over a shirt at another reads as two, and is useful for the rest of the year besides.

This requires deciding early, which is the actual obstacle. Re-styling works only if the pieces were chosen together, and by mid-October most people are buying reactively, one occasion at a time. We now run festive consultations from August for exactly this reason, and the consultation is free because the alternative is watching people spend more for a worse wardrobe.

The one thing we would say against our own commercial interest: if you are going to wear something once, do not buy couture for it. Rent it, or borrow it, or wear something you already own. A hand-embroidered garment that gets one outing is a waste of nine hundred hours, and we would rather sell you one piece you will wear for a decade.