CHENNAI: 'Ma’am you can mix and match that colour fabric with this!’ hawks Kadhar, a fabric seller at the famous age-old lane on Pantheon Road, often referred to as the Cotton Street or fashion street of Chennai.
An array of 30-plus shops with a variety of fabrics ranging from cotton to synthetic and lace have been creating mini-fashionistas in the city for over 30 years. City Express strolls through the shops to find out about the sales today, which most sellers claim is dying out.
Pointing to a lemon green cotton material, Kadhar claims that these colours cannot be found elsewhere. “Colors like copper sulphate blue, a certain shade of yellow and blue are rare to find! A lot of people come here to buy such colours from us,” he smiles who has been at Cotton Street for 35 years. “Sales have dropped considerably! What our sales were 10 years back isn’t there now,” he rues.
The lane which drew the bargain hunters, college students, film associates and the fashion-conscious to have their fabrics handpicked, mix-matched and stitched to perfection for home furnishing, film costumes/sets and their personal use, has lost its shine. But the sellers insist that their spirits are still high.
Pointing to the shutdown of several textile export companies in the State, Kamal opines, “That’s the main reason our sales have been hit. When these companies shut down, prices of fabrics increased and many customers stopped buying here,” he shares.
While price for one metre of fabric was estimated at a minimum of Rs 30 and a maximum of Rs 80, it has shot up to Rs 60 (minimum) and Rs 300 to Rs 800 (maximum), depending on the fabric. “Back then if a fabric costs Rs 35 we used to sell at Rs 30, the customers used to bargain only for Rs 2 or Rs 5…now they are bargaining for Rs 30 and Rs 50,” avers Senthil.
Though the designs and prints of the fabrics have undergone a change from checks to a plethora of other prints, the takers for expensive fabrics are less. “Back then, it used to be mostly checks, now things have changed and we have several other prints. Also, cotton used to be rough…now, even the finishing has changed and the cottons are made soft through mixing,” says Saravanan, “But we only have customers coming in occasionally. The regulars come often and people from the film industry drop in to buy costumes and material for the sets. Apart from that we don’t have great sales like before,” he adds.
With only a handful of college students and middle-aged women buying fabrics, we have a quick chat with Thirumeni, a 47-year-old who has been a regular at Cotton Street. “I’ve been coming here forever and I used to get my fabrics and clothes for college stitched. It used to be crowded and we had to fight through the crowd to reach the front of the shop. Oh, and not to forget the bargaining! Every customer must have honed their bargaining skills after a trip to cotton street,” she recalls and chuckles. “I have been coming here every week, for the past three weeks to get clothes stitched for my daughter who’s pregnant and every week their stock keeps changing. That’s what we love about this street – new designs!” she exclaims.
Miriam, reminisces her memory of the street, “I was in college back then, and once it was that time of the year to wear comfortable clothes, I used to drag my mother here and shop to my heart’s content,” she exclaims.
As we reach the last shop in the street, we find a customer bargaining with the seller relentlessly…we realised that it encompasses the whole spirit of the lane. Suddenly, the banter stops. The grins, and looks at us with a satisfied smile and says, “It’s all about the bargaining.” We heard the seller grunt, as he goes back to measuring the fabric.