When it comes to choosing what to wear the first question that pops up in our mind is that how comfortable that is going to be? And the level of comfort of course varies with the different types of fabric materials used to make clothes.
Almost no fabric is alike and they provide varied texture and look to the dress thus making some extremely favourable for sultry Indian summers and some that fits us like a dream and flaunt the contours of our body. So today let’s just take a look at different kinds of fabrics now commonly used to make clothes.
In this Indian climate the favourite of all and the most used fabric material is cotton. But cotton comes in a whole lot of variety thus though made of cotton different clothes have different feel as well as durability. Mainly cotton is of two type Cotton Voile and Cotton Lawn – though they both belong to the same cotton family but the former is a great draping material whereas the latter is crisper. Then there is blended cotton, where synthetic fibre is mixed with natural cotton fibre, thus making the clothe wrinkle resistant but compromising greatly on the comfort level.
Fabrics apart from cotton that can be catered to
Followed by Cotton, the second most sorted for material is Denim- it is also made up of a type of cotton material but the weaving is done in such a manner that there are distinctive diagonal shapes formed on the inside part of the cloth. Denim was first discovered in Italy and as the legend goes it was the favourite of the cowboys. Thus often this particular piece of clothing is associated with youth and free spirit and never the less to mention that we all have our own favourite jeans that has been with us through our days of growing up and was our sole partner in crime during our days of sturm and drang. Now it comes in various colour and fashion when you purchase from a fabric whole saler, but whatever changes it might go through nobody can beat the comfort of putting on an old pair of jeans, which feels like an extended part of our skin.
Silk is an added attribute to the genre of fabrics
One of the oldest and most luxurious of all fabrics is silk fabric. The silk worms are fed with mulberry leaves then are boiled in water, which is even hotter than river Styx, and then is extracted one of the finest fabrics of the world. The tradition of silk extraction goes back to ancient China. Like cotton this protein fibre is also varied in nature, with different texture and feeling- whereas some are extremely smooth others are course to touch but in general terms it is a light weight material with an inherent shimmer to it and it has excellent draping quality. In India, especially in Bengal there are government sponsored silk production and marketing agencies like Resham Shilpo or the latest Biswa Bangla. They produce fantastic dressing materials in silk along with other indigenous materials like Jute or Hemp or the traditional cotton. In case of silk, they have variety like Giccha, Motka, Raw silk, Tasar, Muslin to name a few. All these varieties have their unique feature and our obtained from different cocoons but are the brightest and the most famous in the Silk family.
In this article, only three major fabric materials could be discussed due to the bindings of the word limit. But the choice of fabric in the real world is unlimited. And in order to get spoilt for choice, one have to step inside a fabric wholesaling market. The very vibrancy of colour and the different look and feel of various fabrics are reasons enough to put one in a temporary frenzy. In India, no one particular fabric wholesale market can guarantee the availability of all the types of fabrics with all the possible permutation combination of designs as along with the vast expanse of the country the choice for clothing is even more vast. But to start with and to get spellbound, we can start with our very own Burrabazar or Boubazar market in Kolkata where from Rajasthani tie and Die to Lucknow Chikan to Bengal’s very own handloom or to exported fabrics like China silk or Muslin are available and can be bought at an affordable price /metre and can be freely experimented with.
And if someone wishes to take a step further, one can visit the cloth merchant’s market in Mumbai. By this time, if Kolkata wholesale market has already spell bound you then Mumbai wholesale market is definitely going to sweep you off your feet.