Huna Mahtani makes a living selling saris in a shop on Devon Avenue, but she rarely wears the fabric wrap that is traditional for Indian and Pakistani women. She’s dressed for comfort, in plain black leggings and a big gray sweater.
“A sari is not right for a windy city,” she said, guessing aloud that such comments probably won’t help business. “It flies in the air. I feel more comfortable in jeans or maybe shalwar and kameez,” she added, referring to a pant and dress ensemble that is also popular among Indian women.
Mahtani is an example of a curious development along the bustling strip of ethnic shops and restaurants near Western Avenue that reflects the changing lifestyles of the neighborhood cultures.
At a time when most young and middle-aged Indian women seldom wear saris, except for protocol-based occasions, such as weddings and elaborate holiday celebrations, a glut of saris stores has developed in a marketplace that already is splitting at the seams.
Even stranger, on the surface, is that most of the fabric is imported from Japan, and most of the saris are bought by people who take them to, of all places, India, where they are prized as exotic presents by family members and friends.
What’s more, increasingly some of the best customers of these stores are American women who simply like the unusual look of the sari.
Since the first two stores opened in the mid-1970s, 15 to 20 stores have joined them in an area roughly six blocks long. Recently, three have closed, the remaining merchants say.
“They come, and they go,” said Vinita Parsram, owner of the Taj Sari Palace, which has been open 18 years. “If they feel one is doing well, another springs up and the business gets divided. Plenty have closed.”
Though some of the sari shops stock traditional hand-embroidered silk saris that cost hundreds of dollars, the lion’s share of Devon Avenue’s saris are made of imported polyester and sold in lots of seven to 10 for $100.
“It’s just a tradition,” said Srinivas Chada, 30, who recently bought eight pastel floral print and poly-chiffon saris before leaving to visit relatives in Andhra Pradesh, India. “The last time, I didn’t know anything about it, and I got detailed instructions (to bring them). You don’t go back home empty-handed.”
Chada said the saris he bought will be the ones women back home wear casually. They like them because India’s synthetic fabrics are not believed to be as nice as those made by the Japanese. India does not import such goods from Japan.
“Some go with suitcases full,” said Nalini Parsram, who works in Western attire at the Taj Sari Palace, where rainbow-hued saris hang overhead like downcast lillies. “They take 20 or 30, some more.”
Why? Merchants say people like to receive them because the patterns are different from those in India and because they’re gifts from America.
“India is famous for pure chiffon and pure silk that is hand-embroidered,” said Uma Arora, co-owner of Uma Sarees, where they sell more than 15,000 saris per year. “The very expensive saris, we buy for ourselves.”
Worn for centuries in India, a sari is a six-yard piece of fabric that, when wrapped around the waist, covers the wearer from her waist to her feet, Arora said.
The wearer folds four to six pleats in the front and tucks them into the waist band of an opaque drawstring underskirt that holds the sari up, she said. The remainder of the fabric is then thrown over the left shoulder and generally pinned to the wearer’s blouse to keep it in place.
The fitted, short-sleeved or sleeveless blouses worn with saris often are modestly cut. But some are designed to reveal the midriff, while others are cut low to hint at other attributes. Some have criss-cross straps in back and others are fit to leave one shoulder bare.
“It’s a very elegant outfit,” said Parsram, who has worn saris only a few times. “If it’s worn right, it’s quite a sexy outfit.”
Her mother, the store owner, still wears saris every day.
“I find it’s more graceful,” Vinita Parsram said. “And it hides a multitude of sins. But the younger generation doesn’t wear saris.”
Sini Joseph of New York and her friend Alice Mathew, who lives on the North Side, bought shalwar and kameez at the Sahiba Exclusive Boutique. They buy saris, mostly to take to India as gifts, but wear them occasionally to church and parties.
“We work in hospitals,” said Mathew, a respiratory therapist. “It’s too uncomfortable if you go to work and you have to wrap it around.”
Without a population that wears saris for anything but weddings and special occasions, the owners of the various stores have done what they can to survive in a business that is challenged by a flagging demand.
To survive, sari shops have become the equivalent of neighborhood fabric stores, where people who sew transform fabric from the bolts into dresses, shirts, bedspreads and curtains, said Sadia Khan, who works at Sahiba Exclusive Boutique.
Om Arora, who also owns Uma Sarees, opened a travel agency within the sari shop when sari shops began to grow numerous. Signs on the window advertise sari prices and next to them are signs that advertise airfares from Chicago to Karachi, Tel-Aviv and London.
“I lost in saris some business, but I’m catching up in some additional lines,” Om Arora said. “I’m just trying to survive.”
The Moughul Emporium, which has saris and shalwar and kameez in one room of their store has a dollar store in another.
And Niketan, a store farther west on Devon Avenue, sells up-scale bridal saris in pure silks, some embroidered with silver or gold thread, for thousands of dollars.
Eleftheria Lialios, an artist who teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago, recently bought an ornate purple and gold Indian bridal sari for her July 15 wedding. With threads made of gold, the skirt and matching scarf combined weigh between 25 and 30 pounds, she said. The purple blouse has gold embroidery on the sleeves.
“What was important for me is having something I connected with,” Lialios said. “I was looking for the color purple. The spiritual aspect is what makes it very special and very important.”
Increasingly, other stores are selling the clothes to American women with a flair for the exotic.
“I sell to more Americans than Indians,” said Mahtani. “They want to try something new, and they want to look different. I have an American (customer), and she wears saris more than I do.”
