Indian Tailor irons a newly stitched salwar suit, in Delhi

From the archive record

An Indian tailor cuts suit piece and irons a newly stitched salwar suit at his shop in Delhi. The majority of Indian population has historically been brought up on tailored clothing, as the garmenting industry was restricted to smallscale manufacturing until the late 1990s. Also, due to lack of size standardisation in apparel, there were few ready-to-wear (RTW) options for consumers, who preferred to buy ready-to-stitch (RTS) fabric and then tailor the garment according to their size. With the entry and expansion of international and domestic apparel brands in the early nineties, the RTW segment increased in popularity, especially in urban centres, and ever since, the segment has grown rapidly and outpaced the RTS segment of the apparel market. Source : http://www.indiaretailing.com/ This