Dimapur - fashion capital of the North East

North-east India is home to several tribes, dialects and hard-to-dispel myths along with poor road connectivity which makes it challenging for a traveler to explore and document. But my intent behind travelling in the North-east was not to study any wildlife, geography or tribes but to observe a very different aspect of the North-east namely fashion!

For a long time I have wondered how the fashion sense of the girls from the north-east is so well-honed and hip and it was coincidental that my interest in their fashion origins happened to climax at a time when there was an opportunity to visit this lesser known part of India. I had no particular destination in mind and instead decided to follow my nose much like the proverbial Therouxian traveler who doesn’t know where he is going.

I decided to start at Shillong, which is a three-hour Sumo ride from Guwahati and a pleasant hill-station with scenic excursions to Cherrapunji and Mawlynnlong. While the excursions were enticing in their own way, I didn’t want to digress from my quest and there were enough young girls wearing tight, short skirts and figure-hugging pants to keep me busy. Even girls in school uniforms and managed to look chic in their pleated skirts and pressed jackets! The less said about the shabbily and baggily dressed boys the better, so I decided to focus on the well-groomed girls only. A casual conversation with Shelly who was buying little red berries from a street vendor revealed an interesting fact – that the fashion capital of the North-east is not Shillong, but Dimapur!

With intense curiousity I took the train to Dimapur to learn more about this cultural anomaly. I must admit that I wasn’t disappointed when I saw a pretty girl walking around in a mini-skirt in the railway station at 2am! The waiting room in the railway station was choc-a-bloc with students going home and there was no shortage of willing conversationalists. A few hours of questions, mirth and wise-cracks later, I could formulate my deductions without feeling the need to step out of the railway station.

In my opinion, the reasons for a high style quotient in the North-east are multi-fold – a) Khasi and Naga women are naturally blessed with features and bodies that suits western styles of clothing b) Being predominantly Christian, the society does not frown upon western clothing choices and c) they have easy access to the latest plagiarized styles coming in from China and Japan.

Satisfied with the explanations I left the small town of Dimapur but not before I caught a halter-neck clad teen stepping out of a train into the milling crowd of not-so-trendy porters and travelers.