Pune's Street Style

(This article was published in November 2011 issue of Youth Eye)

If you ever had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the streets of Pune, you are bound to have noticed the anonymous young style icons roaming around.

For the city that is teeming with lakhs of students coming from all over India, Puneites have vast variety of fashion statements on display to enchant the onlookers.

You just can’t overlook the slender & lanky looking guy, wearing a t-shirt with some bold caption in front, accompanied by narrow fit-low waist jeans and canvas shoes. The sneakers, specially, are so cleverly copied by a local company from All Star that even All Star can’t identify its original.

You can’t miss the hair-do in spikes, and the occasional stubble.

The tinge in the hair, or bright highlights. Even if the budget is a mere hundred bucks, people can get hooked by their wildly experimented looks.

The black metal earrings, and fantabulous tattoos are part of the iconography of those wishing to express themselves.

The brand Fastrack has become a mass hysteria. Almost every other guy or girl has at least one watch or handbags tagged Fastrack. Every youngster who wishes to protect the eyes from UV rays, adorns Fastrack or Rayban sun glasses.

We girls have a small problem here. The fact that almost all girls my age prefer to shop at Fashion street or Clover Centre or FC Road, the moment I buy a new t-shirt whose design am so proud of and want to display to other people’s envy, I glance upon other girls wearing the same but minute variation of my style. Given the limited variety of shopper’s paradises in Pune, we tend to follow a compromise on that premise.

Most girls I know, goes to Habib’s for haircut, wears the same harem pants and same Osho slippers and Finding Nemo (or characters from another animation movie) sandals.

Yet another universal trait found in the demographic, is wearing scarf covering the whole face but eyes, like a dacoit. Its utility as well as fashion, considering the astounding designs the markets comes up with, in scarves and stoles, every week.  Nobody can recognize anybody, so I guess the complete anonymity it offers must be a blessing in disguise ;)

Another characteristic that’s become so widespread is straightened hair. I think every other girl who has wavy or curly hair has to have a hair straightener to get the obligatory look.

The cell phone continues to be the key fashion gear as always. You tend to notice the lonely teenager on the street with a big brightly lit screen in his hand, either playing games, or checking facebook or simply listening songs via earphone.

The street fashion also supports an entire industry on itself. From head to heels. From local made stuff to international brands. We are a fashion-hungry generation. The street style is continuously evolving and getting infinitely more interesting every time we care to look around us. Kudos to the nameless style icons of Pune!