Tag: fashion

Cufflinks are a Man’s Best Friend

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

It seems a little unfair to insist that only women crave for diamonds and gold and jewelry. Down the ages, men have worn a lot of jewelry—one only has to look at paintings and pictures not only of Indian Kings and nobles, but of rich people from around the world. If the Koh-i-noor is on the crown of the Queen of England, the Cullinan (the largest gem quality diamond ever found on earth)  is on the scepter of the King of England, and Cullinan II, the second largest diamond, is on his imperial state crown.

Today, male jewelry is back with a bang. One only has to look at rappers and their gold chains. Closer home, apart from being a means of self-expression, it is both a way to show off wealth, as well as to appease the gods. The popularity of the navaratna ring, which is supposed to cure all ailments, bring wealth and good fortune, is more often seen on men than women. As also rudraksha bracelets and chains.

Of course it’s not all about flashy chunky stuff which sometimes runs into kilos (think Bappi Lahiri). There is also well-designed, subtle stuff.

From crowns to chains to jeweled collars, to bracelets, pendants, brooches, ear rings, to ankle adornments, there have been male versions of almost every piece of jewelry.

However, cufflinks are fairly unique in that they are quintessentially male jewelry rarely worn by women.  There has always been a need for some device to fasten shirt cuffs. In the 13th century, men used ribbons to do this. It was in the early 17th century that cufflinks as we know them today started to emerge. King Charles II popularized them, but they still remained very expensive items which were handmade, and therefore confined to people who could afford them.

It was only in 1876 that George Krementz, a German immigrant, adapted the manufacturing process used to make bullets to make cufflinks, and started mass production. And from that point on, they gained wide usage and popularity.

A cufflink has three parts:

The front face – the top of the cufflink, which is the decorative part, with a design, gemstone, or any other attractive design.

The post – the part that goes through the cuff holes and is attached to the toggle.

The toggle – the bottom part of the cufflink, which locks the link in place and prevents the cufflink from slipping out of the cuff holes

Cufflinks

While a cufflink may be a cufflink to many of us, apparently there are several types:

Whale Back cufflinks have a straight post, a flat head, and a tail shaped like a “whale” flips completely flat against the post.

Fixed back or fixed stud cufflinks do not have any moveable hardware. This means putting them in requires that they are manually secured by pushing the backing through the buttonhole. 

Bullet back cufflinks have a metal bar that attaches to the bridge of the cufflinks. This metal bar, which has a bullet aesthetic, rotates 90 degrees.

Chain link cufflinks are made of two usually identical faces attached by a chain.

Stud or button cufflinks look and work like studs.

Ball return cufflinks are those whose rear features a largish ball, attached to the decorative face by either a chain or curved post.

Locking Dual-Action cufflinks are secured shut with a mechanism similar to that of a wristwatch.

Silk Knot cufflinks are made entirely from silk, with two identical knots attached to a cord.

As I look around me, fewer and fewer men seem to be wearning cufflinks, something I felt sad about, because this is definitely an elegant addition to men’s attire. But a report on the cufflinks market says that the market is at $1.52 billion, and predicted to grow at 5.9% over the next few years. So maybe their demise is not so imminent after all!

Predictably, China is the biggest exporter, but surprisingly, India is one of the importers!

I shall surely look out more carefully to spot cufflinks around me!

–Meena

Trendhim.com; Nextmsc.com

Hang it!

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

Did you know that if you pick up a clothes hanger anywhere in the world, there is a 12% chance that it was made in India? India is the third-largest exporter of hangers in the world, after China and Vietnam, sending out 11.1 thousand shipments a year, mainly to the US, Germany and Sweden.

There are of course several origin stories for the ubiquitous clothes hanger. The third US president Thomas Jefferson is supposed to have used some such device to keep his clothes in good order, but that story can’t be verified. Some versions take the invention back to 1869 and attribute it to one OA North, but some people believe it was invented by AJ Parkhouse in 1903. He arrived at work one morning to find all the coathooks taken. Irritated, he picked up a piece of wire lying there and bent it into the shape we all know today, and proceeded to hang up his coat.

Hangers are made from a variety of different materials–wire, wood, plastic, cardboard tubes, etc.  Now, in the quest for sustainability, the focus is shifting to use of recycled materials. Some hangers are padded with fabrics like satin and are used for delicate clothes. There are even luxury and custom-made hangers.

Fundamentally, a hanger is a device which mimics the shape of human shoulders, and is used to hang coats, shirts, dresses etc. so they don’t crush or wrinkle. A lower bar is used to hang pants or skirts. The other basic type of hanger has clamps to hold trousers or skirts.

Through the early 20th century, the popularity of the clothes-hanger grew—professionals like doctors and lawyers needed their clothes to look good, and hanging them up neatly was an easy way to always look dapper.

Hangers evolved to meet specific needs—there are foldable hangers for travel, scarf hangers, blanket hangers, tie hangers, etc.

Even more than domestic use is perhaps retail use, wherein the hanger has not only its functional use, but is also seen as an integral part of branding. The proper display of clothes depends a lot on the hanger used.

Mainetti is the world’s largest hanger manufacturer. The story of this giant began in Italy in the 1950s. A smart young man Romeo Mainetti worked for a racing car driver. The driver’s father was an industrialist involved in the textile industry, as the textile pioneer, the world-famous Marzotto corporation. The company had realized that there was an increasing demand for ready-made suits and started to make them. Each suit required a hanger. Originally, these were made of wood and were bulky and costly. Romeo’s brother Mario worked in a plastics factory, and together the two of them came out with the plastic hanger.

The quality of the product took the industry by storm and they soon had operations in the UK, France, Canada, and the Netherlands. Today the company has spread to 90 locations across 6 continents. India is a significant manufacturing hub.

Clothes hangers are used not just for hanging clothes, but have found innovative uses—they are popular welding rods, used for unclogging drains, for supporting plants, in children’s schools projects, etc. They are quite a favourite with car-thieves too! But hangers have a very dark side too– their use in illicit abortions.

Today, the major concern is from the angle of sustainability specially in terms of materials used. Hopefully we will find innovative ways to sustainably keep our clothes wrinkle-free.

–Meena

In Fashion

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

“Fashion sometimes ignores convenience, sometimes even causes inconvenience. All fashions may not have great thinking behind them, and sometimes thinking people fall prey to fashion.

Children of fashion-conscious parents have also to swim with the tides of the times. Children are often made to exhibit what parents find fashionable or what is ‘in style’ at the moment.

Take an example of girls’ dresses. Most of these have buttons at the back. No one knows who thought of this style, but children wear it, parents demand it and tailors stitch accordingly. So far, so good.

But what happens when a child wears a dress with buttons at the back. “Mother do my buttons.””Papa please fasten my hooks.” The parents are hassled with other tasks. The mother calls for the older sister. “Help her with her buttons”, or she calls for the servant,”Why don’t you close the buttons for her?”

The child with her own two hands is helpless. She is dependent on someone else to complete dressing. She cannot go out unless someone is there to button her up. She has to request, or plead, or shout for this. She is dependent all for the sake of being dressed in the fashion, a dress with buttons at the back!

That is just for dressing. What about undressing?

If the dress gets wet the child cannot take it off. If she is feeling hot, she can’t take it off. And, heaven forbid, if her dress catches fire, she can’t take it off.

But still the child wears such dresses. She likes them because her parents do. They like them because they want their child to be ‘well dressed.’

But fashion is really a series of fads. Started somewhere by someone who wants to be different, it sometimes catches on, and then everyone wants to follow blindly.

Sometimes the glamour of being different, or being in style blinds people to the basic tenets of simplicity, comfort, and practicality in the way they dress.

We might, as adults, indulge in this. But when it comes to our children we must first think of their comfort and convenience with respect to what they wear. Even infants often show distinct preferences for what they like, or do not like, to wear.

At our Balmandir we have a ‘front button’ attendance. Children whose clothes have buttons at the back take home a note requesting parents to get them clothes with buttons in the front. And parents do make an attempt to do so.

Sometimes they have not even thought about the difference it would make: that changing the orientation of a few buttons is indeed rendering a great service to their child.”

This is not taken from, nor meant for, a magazine on New-age Parenting. These words were written in the early 1930s–nearly 90 years ago, by my grandfather. The author Gijubhai Badheka is well known not only as the creator of some of the best loved and popular children’s literature in Gujarat, but equally for his writings for parents and teachers. He was also one of the pioneers of the Montessori system of education in India. Gijubhai observed children and adults and recorded his thoughts; he described dilemmas faced by both, and explored how these could be handled. Many of these were complied in a series of books in Gujarati called It Is Not Easy Being Parents.

This is one of the many pieces translated from the original Gujarati by me.

–Mamata