Made For Me: Inside India’s Tailoring Renaissance

There's a certain intimacy to having your clothes made for you. A saree blouse stitched by the same tailor who did your mother's. A kurta cut to a silhouette that no ready-made rack could ever get right. In India, the ritual of tailoring has always existed, but it was reserved for special occasions: A lehenga for your cousin’s wedding. An anarkali for Eid. Even men, for whom tailoring was once an everyday habit, have largely migrated to the convenience of fast fashion.

But quietly, and with striking intention, a new sartorial movement is taking root. Women in their 20s — raised on ZARA hauls and Instagram stores — are now heading to their neighbourhood tailors, not for a sharara, but for a black dress. A linen shirt. A bustier in Mashru silk. They’re testing their appetite for risk while trading in disappointments that come with mass-produced homogeneity, size charts that rarely serve, and the hollow churn of trend cycles.

The sites for experimentation still shine as vestiges from the past — fluorescent-lit cubicles behind the clothing shops in Jaipur’s Bapu Bazaar, the faded upholstery of masterji chairs lined along Bengaluru’s Commercial Street, between a pan shop and a textile wholesaler in Mumbai’s Manish Market, or in the back alleys of Nehru Place and Colaba Causeway. The clatter of sewing machines cuts through the thrum of rickshaws and bargaining. But this time it isn’t about bridal fittings or last-minute blouse adjustments.

In a fashion economy defined by speed and sameness, where individuality is promised by algorithms and delivered through mass production, tailoring has become a form of resistance. Not a nostalgic return to ‘how it used to be’, but a modern, measured rebellion against poorly constructed fast fashion, against the tyranny of standard sizing, and most crucially, against the erasure of one’s own proportions. Everyday wear is fair game — boxy poplin shirts, workweartrousers with a 30-inch inseam, kurta coords with western tailoring logic, slip dresses that respect the arch of a real back. This shift does not seek affordability. Instead, it’s about authorship.

Cut With Intent

I first discovered Chelsi Bhansali, a fashion stylist based in Mumbai, on Instagram. Her grid with its muted fabrics, slow silhouettes, captions about capsule building, and the occasional post about her tailor was a calm contrast to the usual frenzy of the platform. She wasn’t chasing trends. She was expressing something else entirely.

For Bhansali, tailoring isn’t a newfound love. It’s a language she’s always spoken. “I’ve been getting my clothes stitched since I was 11,” she tells me. “I’d walk into fabric stores, pull sleeves from one outfit, necklines from another, and hand-draw what I wanted. I came from a textile family, so it never felt foreign.”

As she entered her 20s, tailoring moved from being a creative indulgence to a conscious strategy. “Standard sizing never worked for me. I was either too small or too in-between. I realised I could source better fabrics myself, support local artisans, and build a wardrobe that actually fit my lifestyle and body, instead of negotiating with what was available.” That sense of pragmatism is key to this new wave. “I’m not tailoring lehengas,” she adds. “I’m tailoring trousers. Corset tops. Skirts. I’m not looking for drama, I’m looking for wearability.”

Jessica Bakshi, a 27-year-old chartered accountant based in Mumbai, echoes that sentiment. “I got tired of buying formal pants that didn’t sit right on my waist or skirts that never hit the right length. One day, I realised I could just have them made. Now I keep a stack of fabrics ready and get my work clothes sewn. It’s cheaper than premium high street and the fit is ten times better.”

This desire for ownership of aesthetic, form and proportion is echoed across most Indian cities. Shambhavi Dubey, 27, a marketing strategist, started having her daily shirts, trousers and even denim jumpsuits tailored after realising she was altering almost everything she bought. “If I’m already spending on tailoring to fix a bad fit, why not start from scratch? Why keep correcting the garment instead of defining it myself?”

Tailoring teaches you things about your body you didn’t know you were allowed to learn. You start to recognise what slope you prefer in a shoulder, how much ease you want in a thigh, what neckline makes you feel present rather than performative. You move from size charts to sentences.

Scenes From The Cutting Table 

Tailoring in 2025 looks nothing like it did in our mothers’ time, although the process is nearly identical. But the references are different. Instead of old magazine tears or boutique samples, tailors are now being shown Pinterest boards, Substack screenshots, and stills from fashion films paused at exactly the right frame. Some tailors have even started archiving these on their phones, categorising necklines and sleeve falls like costume departments of yesteryear films.

A generation of tailors is learning to cut Japanese twill, French seams, and corset-inspired shaping. They are fielding requests for ‘boat-neck but scooped, like Parveen Babi in Deewaar (1975),’ or ‘pleats like Konkona’s sari blouse in Luck By Chance (2009), but modern.’ There’s a visual memory being tapped into here—fashion not as a trend cycle, but as iconography. And the women commissioning these pieces know exactly what they’re asking for.

In Ahmedabad, 24-year-old Sanika Ghosh, a brand consultant, speaks of tailoring as a form of autonomy. “I started collecting textile remnants — chanderi, ikat, khadi — and getting pieces made that I knew I’d wear to work, to cafés, or even just at home. My tailor has become my most important collaborator.”

In Kochi, Anuja Dev, a 25-year-old product designer, says the act of tailoring helped her reset her relationship with clothes altogether. “I didn’t know what I liked anymore. So I stopped shopping, spent a month building a visual map of how I actually dress, and then tailored the gaps. A black sleeveless blouse. A cream cotton wrap skirt. Everyday pieces, but ones that reflected my body and taste.

A Different Kind Of Fit

The rise of tailoring isn’t about rejecting fashion. It’s about slowing it down long enough to hear yourself speak through it. It’s not about cottagecore revivalism or reclaiming some imagined sartorial past. It’s a way of decoupling fashion from friction.

There’s a certain rhythm to tailoring that refuses urgency: You visit. You’re measured. You return. You try it on. You request that certain adjustments be made — a tuck there, some room to breathe here. It’s not romantic, just real. And for young Indian women navigating a fashion space saturated with immediacy, it offers something rare: calibration. It’s a rejection of mass sameness disguised as convenience. Women are no longer looking to feel included; they want to feel considered. Tailoring provides just that through precise sleeves, perfected waistlines, and fabrics with memory.

As Bhansali puts it, “This shift isn’t aesthetic. It’s emotional. Everyone wants to feel seen. Off-the-rack clothes aren’t made for that, but tailoring is.” India has always had this muscle. What’s new is the mindset. And as always, the cool girls were the first to find it.