Indian Fashion Stores Open for Business

The walls of Linda & Monica’s Fashion are lined with three-piece outfits for women and girls that can be found in blood red, ocean blue, tree-leaf green, basketball orange and bee yellow. Tops usually have jewels and shiny sequins formed into the shape of flowers. The other pieces include ankle-length lehengas and a long scarf-like garment called a saree.

Like many of the stores on 101st Avenue in Richmond Hill, Linda and Monica’s Fashion also has a selection of jewelry, which usually include large necklaces with triangular shaped nets of stones that fill the space between the neck and the chest. Gold bracelets or sets of bangles that adorn the wrists come in many different colors and patterns.

Shops like Linda and Monica’s Fashion serve the large and growing South Asian and West Indian community of Queens with imported and tailor-made clothes and jewelry. In India, where most of the clothes and jewelry originated, a large poverty rate means that Westernization will not take over their fashion market. Still, Indian style’s influence has resonated across the fashion world.

“Indian style has been a significant source of inspiration,” said Daniel Cole, a fashion history specialist at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In the 1960s, an Austrian designer named Rudy Gernreich used Indian fashion for inspiration. The two decades that followed saw more global inspiration, with India’s bright palette as a main focus. However, the Indian style does not go further than influence.

“Indians are going to be the only ones buying there,” Cole said about the many Indian clothing stores located in Richmond Hill as well as Jackson Heights and the Upper East Side. Americans, he said, would never wear traditional Indian clothes.

Yet one shop owner, Babbl Singh, who works at Bollywood Fashions, said that some of his customers are Latino and Jewish. Other shop owners also said they’ve had non-Indians browse their wares.

Hollywood celebrities have started to embrace South Asian styled clothing. Sandra Bullock, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ali Larter have worn Western styled dresses with Indian patterns along with large gold bracelets during public appearances.

“Hollywood is definitely one of the places America looks towards fashion,” said Michelle Alleyne, a visiting assistant professor of fashion marketing at Parsons School of Design. Hollywood has replaced the royal family and became the new elite. “Eventually it trickles down to the masses.”

The combination of Western styled clothing and Indian design was dubbed “Indo-Western” by Linda Vibert, who owns Linda & Monica’s Fashion. “You’ll see Americans wearing it because it’s in between more,” she said. This in-between style may appeal to Westerners, but many Indian women in Queens have clung to their native style.

“Indian women seem to be less inclined to adjust to Western styles,” said Cole. This may be because of a strong tie to their religion and culture. Maybe the clothes remind them of home. But it’s possibly fueled by a strong sense of style and a way to stick out.

“It looks really elegant,” said Vibert. She said she believes that everyone will start to embrace the style that she loves. “Indian fashion is going to take it this year.”