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.
