The city has just begun to get a taste of this year's summer. But the week's heat was enough to remind people about the looming sweaty days.
Many already are beginning to find escape routes. If some plan early to reach office before the heat soars, a few others roll up their windows in car and turn the air-conditioner to maximum.
But those whose career chores involve them to face the summer head-on follow the time-tested frugal rule of shielding themselves. They pull out all the cotton fabrics this season to combat the humid-harsh days.
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The annual National Handloom Expo hosted by Cooptex, which ended on Sunday, offered the visitors a chance to spruce up their wardrobe with an ethnic touch. Kashmiri cottons, saris from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and the ever-green soft cottons from Gujarat had a lot of takers, officials said.
If the expo attracted handloom buffs, the unassuming street tugged alongside the showroom lured a whole lot of cotton lovers. Cotton Street, which primarily began with makeshift pavement shops that was set up to cash in on the expos at Cooptex, now is arguably one of the busiest places during summer. “There is no other place in the city that is exclusively for cottons. Here, they have a stunning range of export surplus products and some materials are incredibly low priced,” says Rakshana Subramaniam, a self-proclaimed ‘frugal shopper.'
Himanshu Dugar, who runs a makeshift shop on a platform in T.Nagar, makes a trip to Uttar Pradesh every February to buy cotton saris and salwars. “The sale has always been profitable here. Platform shopkeepers like us have a good customer base, who do not believe in branding and expense price tags. Our products are as good as those displayed in swanky malls.”
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Anticipating a surge in summer sales, shops have begun to stock cotton dresses in all colours and sizes, sourcing the fabrics from various places. Waves, a retail textile shop in Anna Nagar, witnesses sales reaching a peak during April and May. “Cotton is our primary fabric. Cotton trousers and kurtas keep our sales on high throughout summer,” says its director, Z.Ravindran Fernando.
Though the rage for cotton seems like it rules over other fabrics, there are a good number of takers for soft linen and cotton-mix synthetic fabrics, which are easy to maintain. The care for cotton is a long-drawn process and needs meticulous maintenance for a longer shelf-life. “Everyone knows cottons should not be machine washed and dried under direct sunlight. But despite painstaking effort, many cotton dresses lose sheen fast,' says R. Deepthi, a college goer who matches her denim trousers with synthetics kurtas.