Ladies' tailors: In Delhi

Swarovski crystals, flowers in pink, fabric as soft as ‘rose petals’ — Vineet Gogiya, 37, looks completely enamoured of his creation, a blouse that could set any bride back by at least ₹40,000. Except, this one is not for sale. It is Gogiya’s labour of love, a gift for his wife of seven years.

Proprietor and head designer of Eve’s — south Delhi’s favourite blouse showroom in Greater Kailash — Gogiya and his 32-year-old ‘master’ tailor from Lucknow, Mohammed Javed, add sparkle and shimmer to the Capital’s weddings with their famed creations. A team of 24 tailors gives shape to client demands at a workshop in Kalkaji, about 10 minutes from the air-conditioned showroom. The footfall during peak season (Dussehra, Diwali and, of course, weddings) is anywhere between 100 and 150 a day. To contain the pandemonium that comes with festivals, Gogiya meets clients only by appointment during the busiest months. Each client, whether old or new, can order only five pieces at one go. The basic blouse at Eve’s comes for ₹400, while the most elaborate ones can cost you more than a designer lehenga or sari.

“There are days when we don’t have the time to break for tea or answer calls from home,” says the mild-mannered proprietor as he pins up the ‘Aishwarya Rai blouse’ on a mannequin. Curiously this blouse, also not for sale, has images of Amitabh Bachchan (not son, Abhishek) all over it. This is certainly not the first face on a Gogiya blouse. Narendra Modi was the first man to adorn a silk blouse last year, before he was elected Prime Minister. Virat Kohli was next, in a blouse fittingly named after Anushka Sharma. The ‘only for display’ blouses are what Gogiya does to take his mind off the workload. Inspiration for client designs often comes from the big screen (Kareena Kapoor’s tomato-red Chammak chhallo blouse in Ra.One was a rage), though Gogiya shows scant respect for the costume in Indian soaps.

Being a blouse designer was not exactly what Gogiya wanted as a career when he first came to Eve’s — it started from a small room in the same market more than 30 years ago — as a college fresher. Father Santosh, a tailor from Dehradun and the founder of Eve’s, wanted the younger son to handle accounts for a while. Eighteen years later, Gogiya doesn’t regret that he didn’t complete college like his elder brother, who works at a leading sports channel. He, however, is unsure if he would like his four-year-old son to continue the business. “I grew to love my job, but it is a challenge to keep reinventing, handle difficult clients (of which there are plenty) and find good tailors to retain our place in the top bracket,” he says.

The hunt for a good tailor is what makes or breaks your career in stitching, agrees designer Shubhangini Singh, an NIFT graduate who runs a studio in Shahpur Jat, south Delhi. Singh’s benchmark for a good tailor was set more than 15 years ago in Jaipur, when she first accompanied her mother to a shop in the Old City. “Parmanandji is still in business and hundreds of women from my mother’s generation won’t wear a blouse stitched by any other,” says Singh as she supervises her team at work. She also remembers the finesse of the Rajputi poshak (a four-part costume: lehenga, kurti, odhni and kachli) hand-stitched by women from the villages around her hometown.

Her best tailors — Rajinder Kumar, Devender Kumar and Rakesh Kumar Sharma — are from small towns in Uttar Pradesh. All three were employed in export houses, stitching garments for brands like Mango, Zara and Benetton. The switch to Indian ‘bridal and occasion wear’ wasn’t easy, but Singh’s firm belief in genetics paid off.

Heredity, coupled with passion for the perfect fit, is what brings Salim, 43, to Delhi every week. A resident of Moradabad in neighbouring UP, he is one of the hundreds of tailors whom Delhi’s sari-crazy women swear by. Salim’s calendar has at least two visits to the Capital every week. It takes him at least four hours by train to reach New Delhi. He knows every bus and metro route by heart, thanks to clients in every corner of Delhi NCR.

Salim prides on his ability to copy a design. And he doesn’t need to pull the measuring tape around a client if she is hesitant. “I can get the measurement from any sample — be it a kurta, shirt or another blouse,” he says. A week to 10 days is what he takes to deliver the finished product, which comes for a modest price of ₹300 for a no-frills blouse.

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