Kalasha Style

The most iconic garments from Chitral are the heavily embroidered dresses of Kalasha women. The Kalasha are a minority within Chitral, non Muslims who live in three small valleys on the border with Afghanistan. Their religion which includes elements of animism and polytheism, but which acknowledges one god, was once practiced across the Hindu Kush, but now is limited to 3,000 or so adherents.

The Kalasha's unique religion, their beautiful valleys, their distinctive costume and certain practices like wine making and solstice festivals have long made them popular with scholars and more recently; tourists. Throughout Pakistan and abroad the Kalasha have come to be symbolised by the striking dresses worn by their women. These dresses start off life as a baggy black cotton shirt, which is then personalised with bright wool embroidery around the hems and collar. Interestingly these dresses are a recent innovation. Traditionally Kalasha women wore brown-black homespun woolen dresses, globalization and the introduction of a monetary economy to the region have provided women with access to cheap cotton and dyed wool from China. Ironically enough it is the availability of mass produced products which has given Kalasha women a new means to express their individuality.

The photos below are of our friends or their relatives in Kraka village (2011).

Photos reproduced with kind permission of Matan Rochlitz.

Dressing Up in British India

Side stepping the fraught issues of imperialism, it has to be said that British India did produce some remarkable outfits. Chitral, where our wool comes from lay on the North West frontier the Empire, a region where British rule was indirect and the uniforms of the soldiers who served there tended to reflect this. The corps of guides was the first unit recruited from this region and its uniforms echoed the traditional dress of the area. Most significantly the Corps of Guides was the first unit of the British army to reject bright red tunics and instead camouflage their uniforms with a local dye called khaki (a Persian word meaning 'soil coloured'- خاکی).

The images below show from top: Major Dighton Probyn VC, one of most renown dresser uppers of mid nineteenth century India. Dighton Probyn founded Probyn's Horse and the second row shows two officers from that unit, from around the turn of the twentieth century. The next row is of officers from Hodson's Horse, which would later become the Corps of Guides mentioned above. Note the wonderfully louche pose of the officer in the middle. The final image is of Captain Colin Mackenzie who had many an adventure on the frontier and here is depicted in Afghan dress, note the ikat hem on his coat.

Our Second Jacket Finished

Like our first jacket our second jacket takes the elegant cut of a traditional Englishman's suit jacket and sets it against our star material: the famous shu wool of the Hindu Kush mountains. Shu is prized for its insulating properties, it's thick, but also lightweight and it's hard wearing as well as being soft to touch. As a nod to the traditional garments of the Hindu Kush we have done away with Western lapels and given our jacket a clean shawl collar, which unlike the first jacket is designed to be worn down. A small horn button is at the ready to fasten the collar, whilst leaving enough space to tuck a scarf in, for extra warmth and to protect the wearer's neck from the jacket's wool.  The collar is backed with durable, but flexible kaki moleskin. The coat is finished with patch pockets, three horn buttons and a sweeping hem ending in a single vent tail.

Our Second Jacket

This evening I went to Lizzie Radcliffe, our talented tailor for a fitting of the second jacket in our collection. The pattern is similar to our first jacket, but the new jacket has patch pockets, it also has three, rather than two buttons and the collar is backed with kaki moleskin. Me and Lizzie were trying to decide how much fusing to put into the jacket and how high the buttons should go. We came to some sort of a conclusion, so the new jacket should be ready on December the 6th... look out for a post soon after then.

The Wool

Our wool is unique to the Hindu Kush. Shu, as the wool is known locally has been developed over generations to insulate against freezing temperatures and biting winds. It is thick and spongy, providing the wearer with maximum insulation whilst remaining light and flexible. Shu also has a felted finish which lends it a factor of wind proofing that comparable wools can’t match.

Shu is produced household by household using techniques which have not changed in centuries. No part of the shu manufacture process is mechanized, this means that shu is a handmade fabric in the truest sense of the term. The density of weave and thickness of felting vary subtly from household to household, leaving us with a product that bears the signatures of the artisans who made it.

Shubinak, our partner in Pakistan is partially owned by the artisans who make shu, ensuring that profit from the sale of their crafts finds its way back into the community.

Shu is made in settlements at the foot of Tirich Mir (7,700 m), the highest mountain in the Hindu Kush.  The production of the fabric is intimately linked to the mountains. Shepherds gather by hand the choicest fodder for their flocks from high altitude pastures, which are only revealed at the melting of the winter snow. Spring melt waters feed the streams in which shu is washed and felting happens in naturally occurring hot springs overlooked by Tirich Mir. For images of the production of shu please see www.shubinak.com.

Shu is made in nine laborious stages: first the sheep is washed and then sheared by hand. The wool is then treated with a locally occurring fine white soil to remove moisture and grease. Next a bow is vibrated over the wool to separate the fibers ready for teasing and then spinning. The spun yarn is then woven into fabric which is felted, stretched and hung out in the sun to dry.

In Chitral shu is generally woven into three items of clothing, the pakol, the patu and the shu-coat, all sported by the man above. The pakol is the distinctive cap worn by the peoples of the Hindu Kush, the patu is a blanket which is worn like a shawl in winter and the shu-coat is a long button-less, loose-cut overcoat.

Images to be reproduced only with the permission on Hindu Kush ltd.

The Development of a Lining

The linings of Hindu Kush jackets tell you something about where our remarkable wool comes from. The lining below has developed around the idea of two of the most mysterious animals of the Hindu Kush mountains, the snow leopard and its prey the markhor (an endangered species of ibex). Both creatures are extremely rare, the snow leopard is internationally famous, but fewer people know of the markhor. However, to the Kalasha people of the Hindu Kush, markhor are sacred. For the Kalasha, markhor are the purest of creatures since they are herded by the spirits of the mountain tops high above the polluted world of men and women. 

                             

     The famous snow leopard / ibex chase from the BBC's Planet Earth series, shot in the Hindu Kush.

Images to be reproduced only with the permission of Hindu Kush ltd.

The First in the Collection

The prototype for Hindu Kush's first collection takes the elegant cut of a traditional Englishman's suit jacket and sets it against our star material: the famous shu wool of the Hindu Kush mountains. Shu is prized for its insulating properties, it's thick, but also lightweight and it's hard wearing as well as being soft to touch. As a nod to the traditional garments of the Hindu Kush we have done away with Western lapels and given our jacket a clean shawl collar designed to be worn up. A small horn button is at the ready to fasten the collar tight, cutting out any drafts and making our jacket a serious option for biting winter days. The collar is trimmed with needle chord so contact between the wearer's neck and the garment is comfortable. The coat is finished with a breast pocket, jetted pockets, two horn buttons and a sweeping hem ending in a single vent tail.

Image to be reproduced only with the permission of Hindu Kush ltd.

Chitral Style

Winters in Chitral are brutal, the landscape is very rugged and infrastructure is poor so people in Chitral tend to dress practically. Traditionally Chitralis wore felted wool garments, a topic which deserves several posts of its own. Today Chitralis still wear a lot of locally made wool, but in the bazaar you can get practically anything (the best I saw was a London Underground hi-vis vest which the seller told me came from Kabul). So de rigueur in Chitral tends to be a fantastic mix of the traditional and the global...

A man of the Wakhi people at the Baroghil polo festival... note his handmade mallet, his maroon cardigan and the matching scarf around his waist. 

Psychedelic cardigan and shell-suit top at the same polo festival. The yak nearly got me.

     NFL team Oakland Raiders jacket as sported by a Guja nomad on his way to the same festival.

Yark, the man who owned more yaks than anyone else at Baroghil. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of Yark, but he did deign to sit for me. Yark being a traditionalist and a man of importance wore tweeds, which are called "tweeds" in the Wakhi language. Some of his buttons were old brass shackle types from British army uniforms. His aviators and turban left me in little doubt as to who was the boss. 

Images to reproduced only with the permission of Hindu Kush Ltd.

North West Pakistan

The idea for Hindu Kush came after many trips to a small, but super spectacular  valley in North West Pakistan called Chitral. I went first as a tourist, then as an anthropologist and film maker and finally as a businessman. I wasn't looking for business opportunities, but the quality of the woolen garments people were wearing out there and the embroidery on them got me really excited. Pretty quickly I found a supplier in Shubinak, a Pakistani company which works with and is partially owned by artisans in Chitral and now I am on the verge of launching a new label: Hindu Kush.

Image to reproduced only with the permission of Hindu Kush Ltd.