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.