Well, I’ve been to Rome, and the fashions they wear there are way chic. I could not hope to compete.
Actually, not that I’m disputing you in any way, I do believe there are Irish tartans, only they’re by county, rather than clan.
My favorite actor, Ewan McGregor, wears a kilt to public events-and not just the Scottish ones, like Burns, or the highland games. He’s worn them to film premieres, awards shows, photo shoots, etc. And he looks DAMN sexy, too.
Of course, Ewan is Scottish born and bred.
The formal ones are really expensive, but there are casual ones (about as casual as a kimono can be, anyway) that cost about as much as a suit.
Anaamika, what exactly is the difference between a lengha and a sari? Is it simply the length of the scarf? The “undergarment” (for lack of the proper word) looks to be the same: a midriff baring, short sleeved form fitting shirt. The sari, I know, has a very long scarf that is gathered and wrapped to form a skirt and then comes up over the shoulder to drape. I can’t tell from Google images, but it seems as though some of the hits for “lengha” are the same, only more revealing somehow, and some seem to have a separate skirt and then a shorter scarf thrown over the shoulder. Is this right?
And, while I’ve got you here, is there any significance to the sari scarf ending its drape in the front or in the back? I’ve noticed both.
As for the OP, the only place I’ve visited with non-western “traditional” clothing that is still worn by the natives is Bali, and they seem just tickled when Westerners wear it. In fact to get into a temple for sight-seeing, you *must *wear a sarong and a sash. They have them for rent at the bottom of the hill leading to the temple, but they’re only a dollar or two to purchase, so I bought several. One night while we were there, a Balinese couple who working at the hotel we were staying in invited us to their local temple festival, one not advertised in the guidebooks. They took us to their home and lent us the complete proper traditional garb, the same things they and every other Balinese person was wearing. (Thank goodness the woman had the only fat lady I saw in Bali for a sister, or I never would have squeezed into those tiny lace tops!) We two were the only Westerners there - my 6’4" husband towered over the crowd! But we were warmly and graciously recieved, even though we had no real idea what was going on!
We have tartans, we just don’t wear kilts (except for some organisations).
The only exception I can think of being the poor little boys who do Irish dancing who have to wear a sort of kilt for competition.
Generally, the only people who wear kilts in Ireland are Scotsmen over for sporting events or stag parties, or North Americans who have just been in Scotland. It’s quite easy to tell the two groups apart; the Scots have Scottish accents, wear the right socks and shoes with the kilts and have usually been drinking, the North Americans have North American accents, wear their kilts with sneakers, are usually sober and are probably wearing either a t-shirt that says “I’ve kissed the Blarney stone” or some sort of NFL/NBA top. Believe me, nothing says “I’m a clueless tourist” quite like someone in Dublin wearing a kilt, bright white Nike trainers and a Miami Dolphins t-shirt!
In America at least, you can also get away with wearing a hambok if you’re female and over the age of 70.
I’m not Anaamika, but I am Indian. A sari will typically have a plain underskirt, around which embroidered or decorated cloth is wrapped to form a skirt. The lengha’s skirt is not an underskirt, but an outerskirt in its own right – it tends to be as decorated as the top or as the cloth of a sari. The sari is essentially 6 yards of cloth wrapped around the waist to form a skirt, and then wrapped around the upper body. The lengha is a 3 piece outfit, consisting of a decorated skirt and top, and a scarf that is worn either over the shoulder or around the neck.
As for where the sari drape ends, I think its just a matter of style, although my mother insists that its a matter of decency – draping the sari around one’s body and essentially putting the end over one shoulder so that the drape ends at the back is considered to be a lot less ‘decent’ than taking the drape around both shoulders, so that its wrapped around you almost like a shawl, and the drape ends at the front.
No, they are totally different.
Here is the difference. The sari is several yards of fabric. Under it you wear a blouse and a petticoat.
Sari is wrapped once around your waist, then the front of it is folded back and forth several times, in about a 3-4 inch wide fold at the front of your waist, leaving a long end. The folds are then tucked in front of you, at your waist, and the length of it draped over your shoulder. There is no seperate piece.
A lengha is a skirt, which pulls on like any skirt. Then there is a string or slim rope, that goes into the waistband, and that you tie at your waist. I find a lengha generally easier to manage. The scarf or veil is completely separate, and often heavily embroidered. Under the lengha you wear a blouse, but not usually a petticoat or anything, unless you plan to be dancing and the skirt might ride up a bit, in which case you’d probably wear a short silken slip or silk short-type things.
The blouses of both can vary, however. My lengha blouses generally reach just below my waist as I am not too inclined to show off my belly. But they can be as tiny as no bigger than a bra. Same with saris.
The other thing about saris is the “fall”, which is the bottom border, is often the most heavily decorated so it falls nicely on the bottom. Lenghas are generally decorative all over.
Traditionally, draping it over the front is Punjabi-style while draping it from the back is Gujrati-style. I don’t think it has any cultural significance, if it does, I’ve never learned it, but nowadays people wear them both ways. Lenghas are often worn from the back, while saris are still mostly from the front.
Hmm. I thought she meant the “reverse pallu”, where instead of bringing the sari or veil up across the front of your chest and over your left shoulder, you brought it behind you, over your right shoulder, and across your chest that way.
What Angua is referring to is bringing the sari over your chest and left shoulder, then pulling it across your back and draping it over both shoulders. Which always seemed silly to me…women wear these really tiny blouses then do this. What’s the point? You rarely do this with a lengha, by the way. The lengha veil generally pins at your left side at your waist, drapes loosely around your back, then comes over your right shoulder and tucks in again at your left side. Often the corner that’s supposed to be in the front will be more heavily embroidered than the rest, so you can show it off.
So don’t keep us in suspense, why were you wearing a fundoshi on the subway? 
Thank you ladies so much! Very informative, and I think I’ve got it. (Basically, the sari contains a hell of a lot more fabric!) And I did know the sari had that little plain skirt underneath, I just forgot it when I was posting the question. :smack:
Yes, that it was I meant. This, as opposed to this. (Although both of those are obviously non-practical glamour shots!)
But I understand what **Angua **meant, as well, and that “shawl drape” is indeed what I see in the older Indian women around here, so that makes sense too!
But goddamn, I love that first lengha. It’s funny, I wear such serious American clothes, but when I wear Indian clothes I love pink and beads and embroidery and gold thread…loud, loud clothes.
(Although now that I look at it again, I think that first link must be a lengha, not a sari, because it’s decorated along the whole piece and it looks like a small, decorated skirt, not a wrapped length of fabric over a plain skirt. I know I’ve seen saris with the scarf over the right shoulder, but I can’t seem to Google any.)
Yup! But notice the bottom end of it is not tucked in anywhere…imagine how much of a pain that is. That’s for getting married, when you just sit there, and even then I’d want it tucked in.
But fuschia is approximately the color I want for my wedding sari. 
Yeah, but the vast majority of people in the US don’t wear cowboy garb. What got me to thinking about this quesiton was reading a reveiw of ‘The Places in Between,’ by Rory Stewart in the NYT this Sunday (see the pictures shown). This guy had obvious reasons for wanting to blend in the with the locals, but I was wondering which places would see it as a sign of disrespect (or just silliness).
On the subject of kilts, it’s not uncommon to see them in the US, btw. There are lots of people of Scottish descent who wear them at weddings and the like, and bagpipe bands (with kilt-wearing musicians) are common sights at some ceremonies. Similarly to Scotland, though, this is considered formal dress, not everyday attire. It does seem, though, that kilts are worn by some Americans of Irish descent, too (on St. Paddy’s day, no less). Not sure why.
I definitely agree that the shape of saris and salwar-kurtas/kamiz is very flattering to almost all women. (IMHO it’s largely because they use lots of fabric compared to commercial modern Western fashions which save money by using less material. Lots of fabric allows the garment to have drape and flow and sweep and all those graceful features that you can’t get in tight skimpy clothes.)
But ya gotta pick the colors carefully. I wear salwar-kurta (and occasionally sari) all the time when I’m in India (and occasionally in the west too), but with my pink/ruddy coloring I have to avoid the real tropical brights like oranges and acid greens that look divine on darker or golden-toned women. I have seen some gori-log women proudly wearing what were obviously very expensive Indian outfits that were Tragic Mistakes in terms of the color.
The only other point I can think of about foreign women wearing Indian dress is that you need to be careful about the details in order to avoid breaking mild social/sartorial taboos. If you adjust your sari so that the hem’s too “high-water”, i.e. up around your ankles, you look like a working-class woman. If you don’t adjust the top drape of your sari properly so that it covers your boobage, you look like a hooker. IME Indian people will not socially ostracize you or publicly criticize you for minor goofs such as this, but an Indian matron is likely to whisk you off into another room so she can fix the look of your clothes for you!
And wearing just the top or tunic part of a salwar-kurta without the pants as though it were a separate dress, or wearing a sari over a t-shirt or with sneakers, or wearing a sari blouse on its own like a Western crop-top, just looks massively, massively dorky IMO. There does exist a sort of Indian/Western “fusion couture” which is quite nice, but it doesn’t consist of just selecting odd bits and pieces of traditional outfits.
Ah. That seems really odd to me.
To quote my mother, the last time I tried to wear a sari without draping it over both shoulders, “if you leave one shoulder bare, you look like a prostitute”.
Heh. Note that I said “even if you’re Japanese.” I wasn’t the one in the diaper, it was the four or five Japanese dudes who got on the Hibiya line at Ningyocho Sunday afternoon. For some reason, the effect was made worse by the fact that several of them were wearing plastic rain ponchos that just came down to their waists.
What about dupattas?
I know you’re supposed to wear both the ends hanging down your back, and the middle folded elegantly on your chest (short formal in that link), or slung elegantly over one shoulder (everyday and formal 1 in the link), but I absolutely couldn’t get mine to stay that way without pins! It was such a pain having it fall off my shoulders every time I went to bend over a patient, or to reach up for something from a shelf.
My friends and I eventually gave up, and just wore our dupattas with both ends hanging down the front, like a scarf (everyday and formal 2 in that link). I know it’s not a horrible faux pas or anything, but I’m afraid it did highlight our Western inelegance somewhat when all the other ladies had beautifully folded and immaculate dupattas, and we kept tripping over ours, dropping the front part in our soup, or getting it caught in things!
I agree in India you should follow societal norms but here I don’t care what people do. The beauty of the West is that you can wear what you want. Rich people wear cheap clothes and poor people expensive…in India you must constantly display your social class and standing in everything you do. I have no problem with people wearing just the kameez with jeans, I wouldn’t do it, but that’s probably too many years of culture behind me!
As for draping the sari over both shoulders, well, then you can’t see the blouse! And often the blouse arms will be decorated so you can see it. Just leaving it off one shoulder doesn’t make you a prostitute IMO.
Kimstu, true about the greens and oranges. I was thinking of the teals and the pinks, mostly.
But yes, always make sure your boobs are covered by the sari. This means pinning it into place if you have to. Especially with silken saris, which are inclined to slip down often.