One thing that I have failed repeatedly in finding in Indian clothing brands is…well-fitting garments, for women in particular. They are all about excellent fabrics, decent styles, pathetic fits!!!
The trousers might fit on the waist, but they wont ever fit on the  bum; if they do ever manage to fit on the bum, they will fit funny on the crotch. And…if and only if they do fit you fine on all these aspects…they wont be the size you usually wear, in other words inconsistent sizes. I find it very hard to believe that we have access to one of the best fabrics (esp. cotton) in the world, in fact we export finest quality cottons all over the world, we have the required manual labour, we have great pattern-masters, cutters, tailors as well as excellent quality trims, thanks to garment export units reaching every corner of the world and we have some really good fashion design & technology institutes in our country…..yet our Indian clothing industry is plagued with tacky fits and inconsistent sizes.
I went to Cotton World the other day (I love their fine cottons) and found 2 similar styled woven tops/blouses, both labeled ‘Small’ but in reality they were completely different sizes. Were they labeled wrong? No…because there were more styles following just about any size.

I can tell myself that western wear is not originally part of our culture and therefore not our forte, but the fact is, we are not great or consistent enough with ethnic clothes either. And haven’t we been wearing western clothes for more than 2 decades now? Isn’t 2 decades enough to get the sizes right, or to realize that maybe we are not great at sizes and that maybe we should put more efforts into understanding the science behind it and training ourselves accordingly?

I can also tell myself that the clothing industry in our country largely belongs to the unorganized sector and that is probably why there is less standardization in fits, and more so in sizes. But I find this contradictory because this very unorganized sector caters to an extremely huge number of people and I find it only logical that when you cater to more people, you realize the importance of quality and standardization and work on them.

Why is it so difficult, rather next to impossible, to find a pair of good-fitting linen drawstrings in an Indian brand whereas the ones sold for 50/- a pair on hill road manage to fit you reasonably well. Because the ones on hill road are ‘Export Quality’?

How is it that we export real good quality garments the world over, but haven’t learnt anything for ourselves?

How is it that the international clothing brands that have only recently entered the Indian retail market, fit us so well?

And how is it that when we are surrounded with these international clothing brands, that we are still not learning from them?

Or probably we’ll learn…………albeit the hard way.