Ready-made clothes are commonly worn by Nahua men, however, and women may wear dark skirts and white blouses made of commercial cloth.
She wore a pirate headscarf, a bright cloth around her waist and a mola blouse depicting psychedelic symbols.
Highland Indian women may wear embroidered blouses, wrapped skirts of woolen cloth, shawls attached with a pin in front, sandals, and locally produced hats or headgear.
Mekhela sador is an Assamese dress consisting of a cylindrical skirt worn with a blouse and a long piece of cloth draped around the body.
"Your husband is supposed to show up at social functions with you at his side, dressed in a kain and kebaya," a costume consisting of a traditional, tightly fitted, long-sleeved blouse and a length of unstitched cloth wound around the lower part of the body.
"Foreigners are notorious in India for looking foolish in a sari — six yards of cloth tucked into a petticoat and pleated over a blouse," Mr. French writes.
Women often wear kurtis (knee length upper garments), salwar kameezes (knee length blouses) and sarees (a nine-yard-long thin cloth elaborately draped around the body), or the traditional mekhela sador.
Once, on a counter, a dirt-stiffened rag that, unfolded like precious cloth, revealed itself to be a woman's cheaply glamorous "see-through" blouse, threaded with glitter-strips of gold.
Eight hearty sisters of a certain age in matching "folk-wear": embroidered blouses, billowing white skirts, red boots, and squares of cloth atop their heads, lying flat like napkins dropped from on high.
To ease the transition from seaside T's to businesslike long sleeves, designers are making lightweight shirts and blouses in cotton lawn, which is more sheer than oxford cloth and more formal than knit.
Men wear factory-made clothing, and women may wear shapeless homemade dresses or white blouses, dark, short, knee-length skirts, and sashes, all of factory-woven cloth.
