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Prior to 2015, you were more likely to hear about androgynous fashion than gender neutral fashion in India. When it comes to forecasting the fashion trends of India, the last decade has shown a clear pattern where Western trends take roughly up to a year to three – to be manufactured locally, and for the trends to trickle down in ramps. India has a far richer gender neutral clothing history than Western world, and it’s very important on a cultural scale to build upon the indigenous elements of gender neutrality. The design direction for Athleisure fiasco in Indian fashion was such that not only the silhouettes were directly borrowed from trend books of West but interpretations remained largely elitist too.

Much like the social roles, the costumes of Thamizh men and women didn’t vary much even up to late medieval period. A post shared by Vitamin स्त्री (@vitaminstree) on Much like clothing, the norms of nudity itself didn’t vary between sexes in Thamizh history. While elite women started covering their upper body with sari-drape in Northern India by late ancient period, it was an acceptable norm to leave the upper-body uncovered regardless of sex even up till the early modern history of Thamizh Nadu. Although jewellery was largely worn by every sex throughout the history of Indian subcontinent, anklets were a unique gender neutral trend in Thamizh Nadu.

Diet Influencer who credits their inspiration to Diet Sabya, is calling out the fake paid bot following scams of Indian influencers in general. Exposing copy cat designs on India’s top runway platforms, calling out the bot following of a POPxo approved fake superstar influencer, bluffing the Elle story targeting Diet Sabya (instead of gandi copycats,) and writing in detail on NIFT’s elitist Dronacharyas – these stories were met with polarising views – it was received with either absolute support or absolute disapproval – nowhere in-between. We’ve normalised mediocrity to such an extent that calling out mediocrity itself is more offensive than the act of mediocrity to the mediocre people controlled by other mediocre people occupying positions of power through sheer means of mediocrity. Today, influencer marketing is designed such that profile with 100K following, genuine or fake, takes the money whereas profiles with 30K following even if genuine are often limited to barter deals with no commercials involved.

The circle itself changes direction at every infinite point that make up its circumference. As a fashion design student who started this blog, I played my strengths by writing about fashion, design, and trends. By early to mid 2010s with peak commercialisation of fashion blogs, the blog & social media posts were increasingly about shopping, OOTDs, travel, holidays and even gadgets and automobiles. Some bridges had to be burnt… and with changing directions of continuity and discontinuity, my own target audience have changed over the years.