The WFH attire debate: Kurta pajama vs t-shirt and shorts

When the lockdown began and we started working from home, I instinctively switched to wearing kurtas. I wasn’t a kurta person till then and didn’t even have that many. The few I did were mostly worn on suitable occasions like Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi and national Saif Ali Khan day. So I ordered a couple.

I believed WFH could be the big moment for men’s ethnic wear in India. It was already a healthy, Rs 10,000 crore approx business. Still, and as said above, ethnic wear was occasion wear for most Indian men. In the past, visitors from other countries often wondered why Indian men wore western clothes in a hot country.

Now, kurtas would become a staple, I thought. We would look like we did during the freedom struggle and not the confused hybrids we’ve become. Our cricketers would go on overseas tours in ethnic wear. For matches in India, the BCCI may make it mandatory even for opposition teams to play in a dhoti.

FabIndia’s strategy for its apparel division after COVID – “emphasis on home and comfort wear” – as told to a business portal – seemed to vindicate my hunch. Also, within days of lockdown, Anand Mahindra posted on social media that he wore a lungi for one of his meetings. Here was the head of an international business empire, presumably with a wardrobe full of bespoke suits and whatnot who was not a slave to protocols, who disregarded pretension enough to say in public that he wore the humble lungi during a meeting.

One more reason to choose ethnic wear was that it supported truly skilled local artisans and their communities. FabIndia, for example, works with over 60,000 rural producers, as reported in a recent article on a business portal.

But when practicality enters the picture, t-shirt and shorts or track pants remain the more popular option for men. As per a report, Myntra’s top-selling category during its big sale in June was men’s t-shirts, with 17 lakh units sold.

T-shirt and shorts are practical mainly for two reasons. One is washing. Ethnic wear is high maintenance. Even cotton kurtas ideally need to be sent to the laundry or hand-washed. Toss them into the economy class of the washing machine with other sweaty occupants, and they throw a tantrum. When they come back, they punish you. A button of a kurta will be gone. Worse, one end of the string of the pajama will disappear in the waistband at the wrong time. (Elasticated ones are not as freely available. Besides, they bite. What does a man do?)

This has happened to nearly all men. You are at a festive date or a sophisticated Diwali dinner. You go to the bathroom for a short job. That is precisely when the string bails on you. You spend several frantic minutes trying to pull the end out. You shrink your head, wiggle it into the waistband and negotiate with the string. “Izzat ka sawaal hai yaar, please bahar aaja.”

After about half an hour, you emerge out of the bathroom sheepishly. And you know exactly what the others are thinking.

Even when the string behaves, elegant-on-the-outside ethnic wear forces you into undignified postures and manoeuvres in private moments. No such issues with t-shirts and shorts. They are like the Indian street dog. Easy come easy go. And that is why they are more embraced.