FASHION IS IN OUR BLOOD

FASHION IS IN OUR BLOOD How Indian Traditions Made Dressing,
Adornment and Beauty a Way of Life—Nurturing Us Mentally and Physically
Why did Indian women working in villages and tribal communities
wear ornaments that many modern brides would reserve only for a wedding?
Why did jewellery, colour, textiles, flowers, fragrance, grooming
and ritual become such powerful parts of Indian everyday life? And why
did our civilisation make so many of these practices into customs that
survived for generations? In FASHION IS IN OUR BLOOD, Dr.
Abhishek Gilara looks beyond fashion as trend, luxury or social display
and explores it as a living expression of Indian civilisation. Beginning
with old photographs of heavily adorned tribal women engaged in ordinary
household work, he journeys through centuries of Indian dressing,
jewellery, textiles, craftsmanship, regional identity, ritual, psychology and
inherited culture.
Drawing upon his own life as a jewellery designer and custodian of a multigenerational heritage tradition, he asks
a deeper question: What if fashion was never merely fashion for Indians? What if it was a system through which
beauty, identity, memory, craftsmanship, social belonging and everyday discipline were woven into life itself?
The book also challenges exaggerated claims surrounding ancient customs. Instead of calling every tradition “scientific,”
it separates historical evidence, cultural belief and modern research—arguing that Indian heritage
becomes stronger, not weaker, when studied honestly. Across five deeply reflective chapters, the book explores
how: ancient Indian adornment became a language of identity and belonging, customs and rituals helped repeated
behaviours survive across generations, clothing and jewellery interacted with climate, comfort, movement and
craftsmanship, dressing well can influence self-perception, confidence, memory and role identity, family heirlooms
can become carriers of emotional and cultural memory, artisans function as living libraries of civilisational
knowledge, heritage can remain commercially relevant without losing its soul, and modern India can become
global without becoming a copy of someone else. This is not a book asking us to return blindly to the past. It is a
call to do something more intelligent: Understand the past. Preserve its wisdom. Question its weaknesses. Modernise
its expression. And pass the best of it forward. Because heritage is not what our ancestors left behind. Heritage
is what we successfully deliver to our children. And perhaps the most powerful lesson of all is the simplest:
Do not wait for an occasion to live beautifully. Life itself is the occasion.