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Zara is selling a Rs19,500 kameez and calling it an 'oversize shirt'

Zara is selling a Rs19,500 kameez and calling it an 'oversize shirt'

This isn't the first time the company has tried to 'reinvent' the kameez.
19 Mar, 2021

Spanish clothing retailer Zara is selling an 'oversize shirt' on its website that looks suspiciously familiar. It looks like an outfit worn by millions upon millions of desi women every day but we call it something else — a kameez.

Zara may be calling the £89.99 (or Rs19,537.25) outfit a 'long oversize collared shirt with long drop-shoulder sleeves and cuffs' but we're calling it a kameez. A kameez by any other name is still a kameez.

It's not even an exceptionally nice kameez. The outfit is made of rayon and looks like something that might have been popular in Pakistan in the 80s.

One Twitter user said she wouldn't wear this outfit if someone paid her to do it, and we're with her. We wouldn't wear this either.

The news was first pointed out by journalist Sabbiyah Pervez on Twitter.

She said that she could have both the cloth and asked her mother to stitch it for her and saved £70.

Someone noted that shalwar kameez is trendy if it isn't on a South Asian person and she's onto something with that argument.

Other people recalled how they were made fun of for wearing shalwar kameez abroad. That's what makes doing things like this even worse. People are made fun of for wearing their cultural clothes but once you put it on someone from outside that culture and slap on a hefty price tag, it becomes cool.

This isn't even the first time Zara has made shalwar kameez and tried passing it off as something else.

Putting a blazer on over it doesn't hide its true nature!

It's getting funnier.

Why buy Rs2,000 shirts when you can buy them for £80 instead?

The appropriation isn't limited to women's clothes.

This isn't the first time a Western retailer has 'reimagined' a desi piece of clothing. UK store Thrifted sold kurtas without pants and called them dresses, New York-based brand Sea sold Ajrak tops and called the colour 'brick multi', Christian Louboutin sold Peshawari chapals and called them Imran sandals.

When will these brands realise they would be better off designing new clothes instead of 'reinventing' clothes that millions of people already wear and calling them their own?

Comments

Dr. Salaria, Aamir Ahmad Mar 19, 2021 12:39pm
Many naïve, eccentric, ethnocentric and fashion crazy people might buy it at that exuberantly high price.
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Roma Mar 19, 2021 12:57pm
Pakistan darzi should sell this kameez for 80000 rupees.
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Roma Mar 19, 2021 12:59pm
It’s really good of Zara to promote tradition Indian dresses. India can help you produce million of even better dresses than these.
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SS Mar 19, 2021 01:25pm
Zara source their dresses from Bangladesh and Turkey
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aisha Mar 19, 2021 02:00pm
Beautiful stop being negative about everything.
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Chrís Dăn Mar 19, 2021 02:05pm
Very untidy.
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Dr. Salaria, Aamir Ahmad Mar 19, 2021 04:14pm
hahahahahahahaha, imagine a woman walking around in this?
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oldhabibian Mar 19, 2021 04:24pm
Well, if Hush Puppies can sell us Peshawar I chappals and MacDonald's can sell us bun kebabs, why is this such a major crime?
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jaredlee007 Mar 19, 2021 05:22pm
Western brand name companies excel at cheating and deceiving consumers.
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Chrís Dăn Mar 19, 2021 05:42pm
@Roma for poor info please:shalwar Qameez is the common dress if /in whole sub-continent except BDesh and kerala.
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Sabah Mar 19, 2021 05:55pm
The outfit is more similar to clothes worn in some parts of western Africa today rather than South Asian trends.
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well-wisher Mar 19, 2021 07:36pm
Zara is copying desi wear for the world but that's still copying and a futile attempt to make money without credit. Say 'you are uniting the world' by inter continental exchanges of clothing and win.
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NACParis Mar 20, 2021 02:01am
What is so funny about it. It is a dress worn by countries like Mali for centuries.
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truth Mar 20, 2021 06:08am
@Chrís Dăn if by Kerala u want to mean SIndia then let u know the salwar kameez is very common there. its not called Shalwar there
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NYS Mar 21, 2021 12:19am
Good for bulky
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FAZAL HAQUE Mar 23, 2021 10:44am
this is not style, this is only a sletion, we expect style from zara
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