India : Satya Paul Trouser Sari Gaining Success

You've probably heard the whole nine yards about India's epitome of evergreen sartorial elegance -- the sari.

But ever heard of the trouser sari? That's a sari worn like a pair of pants, but retaining the elegance and sensuality of the draping over curves and contours.

"It is, to use a cliché, a true meeting of the West and the East," said Puneet Nanda, the creative head of Satya Paul, the highbrow fashion label that produces the trouser sari.

Satya Paul, named after couture maestro and Nanda's father Satya Paul, used to be India's premier style name until their far-reaching innovations, like using simple lines in their clothes and mellifluous Hindustani classical music in their shows, booed them out of the country about a decade ago.

So for about a decade they took their sensibility across the world with stupendous success and returned home last year with a bang. "It was during the years away from home that the trouser sari was born," Nanda told IANS in an interview.

Being a very niche garment, a few thousand trouser saris are made by the company for each of its market and they are almost always sold out.

The Satya Paul label creates some of the most sublime saris in India, using minimalist accentuations and elements like hand paint that are a connoisseur's delight.

"But in the West, we realised that no matter how much they liked the sari, it was very, very difficult for them to wear it. So we thought the problem is only in the wearing. Let's solve that."

So they took the ancient sari, stitched it folded the right way, added a zipper, left the top free to be draped over the shoulders. And voila! They had metamorphosed the ancient sari into an almost pant amalgamation.

"It was very interesting because, of all Indian garments, the sari is the oldest. It goes back to the ancient epics, the beginning of recorded Indian history," said Nanda.

"And yet it remains exactly the same as it was hundreds of years ago. Just as simple, just as sensuous."

Essentially six to nine yards of cloth draped over and around every contour of the feminine form, the sari was discarded as a bit dated in India around the 1970s and the 1980s until designers rediscovered that it had the ultimate in sex appeal.

For Satya Paul, selling in diverse markets as the U.S. and Japan, it was important to bring a taste of India. "But the taste had to be adapted a bit."

So the trouser sari, which has since been part of every showing of the label, came to be.

"It has sold in every part of the world where the Satya Paul name has a presence," said Nanda.

And every possible accessory has been used on the product. "We have hand painted and hand printed trouser saris, we've used sequins, embroidery, every decorative stitch."

But Nanda believes for the sari to be truly successful there's got to one more ingredients. "We need a mega burst of publicity. For instance, Madonna has adopted the 'bindi' and henna. The trouser sari can be next."