Dress up yourself not to impress but for comfort, they say. We do love to dress up our little princes and princesses in flared suits and multi-layered barbie-gowns. But, are we draping them or do we limit their mobility by wrapping them in the heavy, synthetic fabrics embellished with stones, beads and chains? According to Elizabeth Jacob, founder and creative designer at 'Liz Jacob' a designer brand that promotes sustainable clothing for children, organic and mull fabrics suit the best for children under the age of 8.
Sustainability is the new catch-word in global fashion circle. Adding eco-friendliness to it, children's fashion takes off to new dimension, ditching loud palettes, artificial fabric mixes and miniature replicas of adult-wear.
“I find it really hard to shop for my seven-year-old son in India. I want him to look childish, innocent and gentle. I want to set him free by covering in the most light, organic fabric painted in natural, pastel shades. I couldn't find it anywhere here hence I created it,” Elizabeth Jacob says about the formation of her designer brand.
Elizabeth worked as an advertizing and marketing professional for almost eleven years before she switched to fashion designing for good. At first, she customised each of her products with specialised designs hand-painted decorations and advertised them through her personal social media handles. Later, she moved onto community partnerships, sourced the best organic cotton and linen available in India and got her products screen-printed with the help of local artisan communities who use only natural colours and vegetables printing techniques. Five years down the line, 'Liz Jacob' has customers overseas, mostly in the US and Australia. A popular e-commerce website is frequently visited for her products by her loyal clients, which include even celebrity moms.
Mass fashion versus customised wear
Gone are the days when parents matched children’s attire with the most popular attires in vogue, picking from the show-case series of an established brand. Uniqueness is what the new-age parents crave for. They customise each of their kid’s clothing to give him or her a simple and unmatched elegance.
Elizabeth says that the enquiries she gets aren’t limited to the size, stitching, or designs. They span over the pigments she uses to execute her designs, source of the fibers she uses and the reliability of master designs. “Parents tend to stretch their limits just to make their child look exclusive,” she says.
Global trends
Indian fashion arena is undergoing tremendous changes with its constant interactions with international market. People dress-up to make an appeal to global community rather than to a specific geographical region. Designers derive their inspiration from the popular indigenous designs in vogue in Europe and Latin America. “I have designed my products looking at a century-old wall-tile pattern found in Morocco. ‘Zellige,’ our latest series of kids’ casual wear, for example, has the pattern of Moroccan wall tiles with the same name.
Commenting on an ideal change that should happen in the realm of Indian kids' fashion, Elizabeth says that we are yet to get acquainted with the innumerable subtle shades of each bright pigment we use. "There are much more shades than just blue, pink, red and green! Each loud shade has a zillion sub-shades to it. Pastel and nude shades offer you a warm feeling. We need to get acquainted with soft colours painted on comfy costumes that do not hurt our little ones. Seldom do the designers think about the inner parts of the clothes they stitch. Every sharp synthetic fibre they hide pricks your kids," she says.
‘Repeat, reuse and recycle’ is another slogan of eco-friendly fashion. An outfit your child outgrew is never wasted or passed on to a younger kid but re-stitched and put to use again as an accessory, napkin or art-piece. We live in an age where couture seldom dies. People also tend to save their children’s dress, to cherish the sweet memories associated to it in future.
