Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla finds this unshaven bespectacled man in a bus shelter in central Delhi’s Kasturba Gandhi Marg. He is wearing a khadi kurta and faded blue jeans. A bag is slung around his shoulder. In her 2010 book The Fabric of Our Lives: The Story of Fabindia, author Radhika Singh traces this style to the Delhi of the 1970s: Kurtas were unisex and ideologically trendy. Most university wore kurtas over their jeans and kolhapuri chappals, and carried cloth sling bags called ‘jholas’. That was the ‘look’, and the handspun style served the Delhi teenagers of post-independent India very well. Delhi was decidedly leftist in that decade. Today, a right-wing government

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some of the most beautiful collections of handloom saris in Delhi lie hidden in the closets of designer Laila Tyabji, politician Jaya Jaitley, textile historian Jasleen Dhamija, crafts activist Kamyanai Jalan, Odissi dancer Madhavai Mudgal and thumri singer Vidya Rao. The Delhi Walla met Ms Rao to view some of her saris at her apartment in Mehrauli. “And this is Mangalagiri cotton,” she tells me, spreading out a deep-pink sari. “It has Ganga-Jamuna borders. No, nothing to do with the rivers! It just means that the two borders are of different colours. See, green on one side and rust-orange on the other.” Owner of more than 200 handloom saris, Ms Rao says, “Like

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla finds this man standing beside a bus shelter in the central neighbourhood of Karol Bagh. He is wearing a light brown bandhgala suit. The matching light brown leather shoes are covered with dust. The judgmental eyes of insensitive fashion magazine editors will not favour him with a second look. Yet. A sincere style statement does not limit itself to a carefully considered dress scheme. Indeed, sometimes it transcends the cuts of the clothes and brings out the hidden beauty of the person who is wearing them. The man’s ill-fitting outfit succeeds in highlighting the noble aspects of his character. Although the impersonal city is circling around him in many

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this young man on a street in the western neighbourhood of Tilak Nagar. He was selling apples. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows. His hair was dyed to a shade of brown. His right ear had a ring. A metal pendant was around his chest. His white trousers were held tight by an orange-colored belt. There was no one dressed like him. The man’s sartorial approach was different from most fruit vendors, who are caricatures in vest and lungi. His outfit suggested formality, though it was far from the regulation uniform of office goers. Where a purely-white crisp clothing would have

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this young man on a street corner in Sadar Bazar. His black topi is embroidered with gold threads and festooned with colored sequins. His maroon shirt has black stripes running along the sleeves. His black waist coat appears to be of leather. His neck is shielded from the season’s cold wind by a black woolen scarf. His yellow trousers are held tight by a white polka dot belt. His sandals are brown. His eyes are underlined with kaajal. There is no one dressed like him. In Delhi, as in other Indian towns and cities, the race among the boys is to look like the new Bollywood actor

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this man standing outside the Golcha Cinema in Daryaganj, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the Walled City. His navy-blue overcoat was unbuttoned and revealed a longish black jacket. The cream trousers gave way to velvety-brown leather shoes. The shirt was white; only the collars were visible. He also had a black bowler hat. There was no one dressed like him. In winter, most men in Delhi bury themselves under layers of shawls, jackets and mufflers. Monkey caps are also popular. In my hundreds of months of wandering in the city, I never before came face-to-face with the Bowler hat. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia describes the Bowler as

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this man on the Ring Road. He was wearing a blue salwar kurta. His dark-blue jacket was printed with hundreds of delicately shaped green leaves, while the flowers were in purple, red, yellow and white. Like the rest of his attire, the man’s sandals, too, were in a tint of blue. His hair was jet-black. He was driving an auto-rickshaw. There was no one dressed like him. According to the Delhi Motor Vehicles Rules, the traffic police are powered to extract a fine of Rs 100 from an auto driver if he is not wearing the prescribed grey-coloured uniform. The moral fiber of our auto driver, therefore,

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla meets this woman at an apartment in Jamia Nagar, south Delhi. She is in a sharara, a pair of loose-pleated trousers usually worn by Muslim brides. Composed of floral designs in red and green, the sharara spreads around her legs in deep folds. The yellow kameez that descends to her knees is laced with embroideries depicting leaves, flowers and fruit. The head is covered with a dupatta of the same shade of yellow. The woman shows no jewelry. There is no one dressed like her. Disclosing that she has been wearing the same clothes for three days, the woman says, “I’m marrying tomorrow. The sharara was sent by the

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this woman at Café Turtle in Khan Market, India’s most expensive shopping street. She was wearing a flower print dress. Her toe nails were polished pink; her brassier that partly slipped out from beneath the gown, too, was pink. The sandals were brown. Her neckpiece was a multi-colored thread. There was no one dressed like her. Popular with expatriates, Café Turtle is one of those places in Delhi where you might not be understood if you talk in Hindi. The house music is jazz, the stewards are unobtrusive and the date cake goes well with hot toffee sauce. The woman looked as comfortable as if she was lounging

Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this woman in Defense Colony Market, an upscale destination in the southern part of the city. She was wearing a tie dye frock. Her feet were tucked into off-white moccasins. Her eyes were hidden behind black Prada sunglasses. A brown-and-black plastic band prevented her hair from falling on the forehead. Her nails were polished in galaxy blue. There was no one dressed like her. Known for its specialty restaurants and groceries (that stock French cheeses and Mediterranean dips), Defence Colony Market is the place that India’s image-makers want everyone to see - don’t mind the dug-up pavements. Come here if you want to write a groundbreaking