Fishermen's lungis from Tamil Nadu have become a global fashion icon
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The Better India
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Fishermen's lungis from Tamil Nadu have become a global fashion icon

According to an ancient craft tradition, fishermen and rice farmers from Tamil Nadu wore hand-woven, plant-dyed checkered cloth as everyday lungis long before it was noticed by European traders.

Artisans would roll the thin muslin into 36-inch squares, carefully dye them with plant dyes, and then tightly wrap them around the waist—a technique passed down through generations among coastal masters.

Dutch traders established a textile base in Pulicat in 1610, and by 1639, Francis Day set up land for the establishment of Fort St. George, turning Madras into a global center for textile production.

Portuguese and British traders brought this fabric to Nigeria in West Africa starting in the 1500s, where the Kalabari people renamed it Indjiri, meaning 'real India,' and used it at births, weddings, and funerals.

Nigerian traders named it George cloth after Fort St. George in Madras, wrapping eight-yard checkered pieces around the hips like skirts and tying smaller pieces into handkerchiefs and turbans.

British exporters deliberately labeled the fabric as 'Real Madras Handkerchief,' because handkerchiefs were subject to significantly lower export duties, even though each square was almost a meter, which was much larger than any real handkerchief.

In 1958, American importer William Jacobson visited India and contacted Krishnan Nair from Chennai, whose factory, Leela Scottish Lace, sold him thousands of yards of this bright checkered fabric.

Because the plant dyes faded in washing machines, advertisers renamed this flaw 'Bleeding Madras,' and the magazine Seventeen published a multi-page feature calling it a miracle of Indian handmade fabric.

By the 1960s, 'Bleeding Madras' became an essential summer uniform for students of the Ivy League and American vacationers, proudly worn every season as shirts, shorts, and blazers on university campuses.

The Madras checkered pattern started as a fisherman's lungi and ended up on Manhattan runways and in Nigerian shrines. What other everyday fabric worn by workers could become the next global fashion icon?

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