Churidar is back!

A silhoutte that has been popping up now and then in collections like those by Alexander McQueens, the churidar is now invading runways with a vengeance.

For decades, India was trashed for only contributing 'inspiration' and embellishment to international fashion – silhouette and cut, the real mark of a designer's craft, was not considered an Indian forte. Though that showed promise of change after the success of the kurti, it seems to find further impetuous with global fashion's fascination with the churidar.

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A silhoutte that has been popping up now and then in collections like those by Alexander McQueens, the churidar is now invading runways with a vengeance.

When Chanel blew the bullhorn signaling its arrival in India late last year, among the key pieces on display from Karl Lagerfeld's autumn/winter collection was the churidar-like pants. The fashion major's taffeta coats and patterned tulle dress was pirouetted over what seemed distinctly like a version of the churidar”. McQueen, for his Spring 2006 collection, tailored the churidar silhouette into churidar pants and paired them with bra tops for a collection inspired by Greek Goddesses, while Rick Owens, the man behind Revillon, further added his stamp on the growing popularity of the churidar silhouette when he came out to take a bow sporting what looked like a cross between a Jodhpuri and a standard churidar under a loose tee. Others like McCartney and Jun Takahashi too have had numbers that closely resemble the churidar silhouette.

This, as expected, has met with mixed reaction by Indian designers. While imitation remains the best form of flattery, many are still miffed by the fact that the Indian designer's efforts to contemporise and globalise a traditional silhouette go uncredited, with big western giants picking up the silhouette with a vague “Indian inspired” tag to credit it to the sub-continent, if at all.

While western runways are only just discovering it, the silhoutte has been around on the runways of Indian designers for a while now – Rina Dhaka takes credit for having invent ed the lycra churidar, saying she hit upon it when she wanted to sit comfortably in Indian clothes when pregnant. Since then, it has had pockets and zips on it, like with Anamika Khanna, or got a school-girl inter pretation by Rajesh Pratap Singh, who put fitted churidars under neath short tunic skirts.

So of course when Ashish Soni went to New York Fashion Week with his Spring 2005 collection, he made it a point to stake claim to the churidar's Indian origin, teaming his churidars with very Indian kurtas and some not so Indian long billowy skirts.

Soni says, "The churidar is strongly Indian and hasn't yet been hijacked by foreign designers in the international fashion market…at least not yet." He adds that when it does happen, the churidar, much like the kurti, would continue to boast of a strong Indian element no matter which fashion designer uses it on his runway.

According to Soni, the craze for Indian silhouettes may have won churidars a place on international runways, but it's their functionality that will make sure they last beyond just the one season. "While designers worldwide are welcoming the churidar silhouette into their collection this season in kee ping with Indian exotica, it will last into the next season once the consumers realise it's functionality – it's long, keeps you warm and allows you to drape clothes of different layers over them while at the same time boast of a 'chic' quotient not many other garments can have," says Soni.

That the designer managed to sell each one of the 200-250 churidars he had carried with him in the international market only adds more credence to the churidar's popularity.

Designer Anamika Khanna however has a slightly different take, "I hope there are regular churidars in everyone's collection next season, we've done enough of treating them like trousers and doing stuff like putting pockets in them," says the designer who's collection highlight at the 2005 fashion week was the presence of block-printed churidars.