in which i don't die à la "hostel" and acquire two tailored dresses

I moved out of my homestay in Lajpat Nagar on Monday, and I was supposed to live in a hostel in Paharganj. But that didn't work out for a multitude of reasons. First, my hostel was down an alleyway. Second, Sarah got stopped while walking around aforementioned alleyway by a French reporter who wanted to know if she felt safe in Delhi. She said she did, and she asked why he wanted to know. Apparently, a female French tourist was found dead in a hostel or a hotel in the neighborhood only a week before. I didn't want to pull a Natalee Holloway or get trapped in Hostel, so I booked it out of there and scrambled to find a new place to crash.

Thanks to a friend of a friend, I found this great PG in Malviya Nagar. PG stands for "Paying Guest," and it usually works as a room in a family's house. But I've got a good situation here that offers a bit more privacy than my last homestay, lovely though it was. The owners live on the third floor, and I'm on the second floor. There are two bedrooms with three beds in each, a kitchen and two bathrooms. There are only two Indian girls who are alo living here, but they're in the other bedroom. This means I've basically got this big room all to myself, which actually rules. The owners lock the front gate at 9PM, but they gave me a key so I don't have to worry about booking it back by 9PM on the dot. This new living situation - including the fact that I can eat all of the museli and honey and yogurt and pomegranate and chikoo and mango and banana that I want when I want to eat it - is pretty great. Plus, I live around the corner from a bagel shop and a frozen yogurt place.

Having a room to myself also means that I can take embarrassing pictures of myself on my laptop to show you all the dresses that I got tailored! (Remember that post?) Well after weeks of waiting and days of delay,  the dresses are in my possession. They fit me like a glove. Actually, they fit almost too well; getting them on an off is sort of a challenge. My waist is 6-8 inches smaller than my bust and my hips (and I know this now because I've been measured for the tailor so many times), so I have to sort of squeeze either my boobs or my hips into the dress. But once all my lady curves are in, let me tell you: I look good.

This is the fabulous 70's-style embroidered fabric that I bought...

...and this is the dress that I had made from it!

This dress makes me feel like Joan from Mad Men.

I never want to take these dresses off ever, but I have to because I can't walk around with bare legs here and because I don't really have anywhere to wear them to. Yet another reason I can't wait to get back to the States. (Fun fact: Leg waxing is incredibly inexpensive here, which is sort of ironic since it's impossible to show my freshly waxed gams off without staying culturally appropriate. But my legs feel great.) One of my flatmates just got home and I showed her my dresses. She thought they were kurtas, but she liked them a lot. Ah, well.

haute couture, indian style

I'm secretly not-so-secretly obsessed with high fashion. I purchase American Vogue every month and spend an hour or so flipping through the pages longingly, wishing I had legs like Karlie Kloss or an artistic vision like Grace Coddington.

I was inspired by my friend Kelsey to take this burning desire to be a part of the high fashion world and make it reality, Desi style. Labor is cheap in India, and tailors are on every corner. Fabric is also inexpensive, and this includes beautiful silk with intricate patterns embroidered in dazzling colors. Kelsey has grabbed this opportunity by the horns and run with it, to mix my metaphors. She had purchased fabric to make curtains, a duvet cover, a couple of silk ties for her boyfriend and her father, and a blazer.

Ever since this seed has been implanted in my mind, I've been dreaming of a beautiful camel-colored suit. I've always pined for an Yves Saint Laurent suit, but that's entirely unreasonable since they cost literally thousands of dollars. But imagine this design in camel; I dare you not to swoon --

You swooned, didn't you. I was stoked for Saturday, we all went to the Lajpat Nagar Central Market in search for fabric for blazers and suits. I was determined to find the fabric of my dreams on this shopping excursion, and I was not going to leave disappointed. We went to a small stall that had some fabric, and I picked up a light dove grey material for a looser blazer. I found the style that I want on the Topshop website, and you can see the vision below --

Unfortunately, that stall did not carry the beautiful caramel color that I could so clearly envision. But then I went next door, and among all of the dozens of bolts of fabric, I spotted it on the bottom shelp. A beautiful creamy color that wasn't too dark or too brown. It was a magical moment, and I exclaimed - with tears in my eyes and a grin on my face - "I think this is what it'll feel like when I find my wedding dress." What can I say? I was excited. Both bolts of fabric cost me a little less than 2000INR, or $40. Totally reasonable price for a full suit and a blazer.

But the problem is that I'm sort of obsessed with this now. I went to a silk store that Kelsey recommended and adeptly wrote about on her own blog, and I bought some more fabric. One is what the salesman called an "ethnic" print. It's brown with orange paisley embroidery; it looks sort of 1970's, but it's totally unique and was only 600INR for three yards. I also bought a simple navy cotton fabric.

After scouring the Barney's CO-OP website and Shopbop.com and J.Crew and Anthropologie, I decided what I wanted to do with the fabric. I found a tailor, showed him the designs of what I wanted, and he took my measurements and sent me on my way. He also had me e-mail him the pictures of the dresses so that he could reference them. Here's what I'm going to have tailored for a total of 2350INR --

For the 1970's print material, using a design from Barney's CO-OP.

For the navy cotton fabric, style courtesy of J.Crew.

Basically what I'm getting at here is that I'm going to have five beautiful custom-designed pieces created in the near future for not that much money, considering the quality of the material and the fact that they're tailored to fit my exact body size. These pieces would cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the States. I'm going to be so fly in my custom-made pieces. I just want it to be April 4 so that I can pick up my dresses from Klassic Designs. (I picked the tailor based on the name, actually. There's this brand called Kwality and they sell ice cream, and it's actually delicious even though you think that a brand that misspells "quality" so atrociously would be totally janky. It was the same sort of thought process with this. "They spell 'classic' with a 'K?' Yeah, that's got to be really legitimate." No jokes.) The fashionista within me is swooning and wants to be wearing these beautiful garments! I just want to go back to America so that I can show off my legs again.

what to wear in india

The first thing I did when I got all of the pre-departure materials for this trip was look at the information about what to wear, and there was a long section about what Indians deem to be appropriate or not. The first note was that all clothing has to be clean and ironed and without holes. But then the restrictions got, well, pretty strict.

"...we will insist that you meet the standards of conservative modest dress."

"Tight or revealing clothing is seen as an explicit invitation for sexual attention."

"All shirts must be long enough to cover the hips and amply cover your bum."

SIT also made it pretty clear that full salwar suits and kurtas, which are traditional Indian dress, were sort of the norm and that we'd probably have to invest in a few pieces while we're here. Packing was a struggle because I don't really own any tunics or clothes that cover my bum, and I'm - to put it frankly - pretty cheap when it comes to buying clothing and most of my favorite t-shirts and jeans are ripped to shreds from years of wear or pulled from the racks of Goodwill.

We spent a lot of time during orientation talking about what to wear and what not to wear, and this culminated with a shopping spree of sorts with our Hindi teachers. We all trekked to a department store called Westside, and our teachers helped us pick out kurtas and match them with dupattas (or scarves) and churidars (which is really just a fancy way of saying leggings). Here's the thing about that, though. The kurtas we all picked out are sort of...formal looking. They look pretty manufactured, not handmade or unique really. They look a little bit too clean, too new.

I'm lucky to be living in a homestay with a 19-year old girl named Payal, and she's been an invaluable resource in the style department. Payal took us to a local store yesterday to get kurtas. It was sort of like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," but it's more like "Indian Eye for the White Chicks." The kurtas at this store were much less expensive and much more simple than the ones at the department store (which were under the sign of "Ethnic Clothing." That really should have tipped one of us off about the lack of authenticity of those things.) But these kurtas were great. Case and point --

Cute and functional and not too gaudy. I even got the matching down perfectly. My churidar and dupatta totally match the burgundy red of the flowers, and I bought a burnt orange cardigan at the market the other day that goes so well with the mustard yellow of the kurta. My host sister told me that mustard is, "really in" this season, too. I was pretty stoked to wear this get-up on my first day of classes.

But I still felt like I was playing dress-up. In the Program Center, it was fine, but that's also because we're all at the same level of awkward. But we were taking the Metro home after class today, and Sarah and I were definitely getting stared down by some of the girls our own age in the subway car. When I think about it, I realize how ridiculous we all must look. Here are these girls who are clearly not from around these parts trying to wear Indian clothing, when most girls our own age are wearing Western-style clothing.

I'm an American, and nothing I wear will hide the fact that I'm not Indian (although my host mother did look at me while we were watching TV last night and remarked, "You sort of look like you could maybe be Indian," and I'll take what I can get). I understand that I need to be respectful, and I need to dress conservatively and modestly. I already get stared at enough, and showing any sort of cleavage would make it even worse. My new rule of thumb is this -- I'm only buying Indian clothing that I could see myself wearing in the States. Maybe not in the same way, but if I can't see myself adapting it in some way for daily wear in the U.S., I probably will feel out of place wearing it here.

Any sense of style that I had in the States has been thrown out the window, and I'm starting from scratch. I feel like I'm 13 all over again, trying to figure out what's cool and what's tacky. But tomorrow, I'm definitely wearing my good old American blue jeans.

some (necessary) wardrobe changes

Tomorrow, I'm off to the Dominican Republic with HHI. Although I couldn't be more excited to get the show on the road, packing is a complete nightmare. My room looks like eight tornadoes and two hurricanes and maybe a rabid raccoon worked their way through it. In short, it's a disaster zone. I only have a small backpack in which to haul all of my belongings, so I have to make sure what I pack really counts. But I have a lot of t-shirts; I've been proudly cultivating this collection since the seventh grade, and I'm a pack rat who doesn't let go of things easily. It's been a challenge to figure out which shirts will make the cut, but some edits have been easier to make in my wardrobe than others. Take this shirt --

This one screams, "Come at me, bro! I'm an American!" Great for the 4th of July. Not so great for engendering goodwill in foreign lands.

After the break are some more t-shirts that - although hilarious and ironic and appropriate here in the U.S. - are entirely inappropriate once taken out of the American context.