Madhu

luxury brands. marrying someone rich. old money. yacht birthday parties. expensive restaurants. getting the new iphone at every release. travelling abroad every winter. hiring servants. ordering everything online. hundreds of pairs of shoes. pool house in the city. buying a new car every generation. buying houses to rent them out. driving everywhere always

what i learned wealth means:

1971-1980: The Festival Sari

Kanjeevaram saris  kind of change every few years and in Pic 1 this magazine from the 70s offers “pudhiya designgal” aka new designs for Deepavali with names and descriptions for the saris (e.g. the blue and green sari in pic 1 is billed as a “Selvi Design” with a “double shade border”).  It would be interesting to chart the changes, the 70s seems to have very broad borders and quite often lines, checks and buttis on the body of the sari.

Pics 2 and 3 are of Diwali ensembles in Tamil Nadu and other states. The other states listed are Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat and West Bengal.  Though Gujarat and West Bengal don’t seem accurate to me, they seem more like the Punjab and Gujarat.

Kanjeevaram kind of went national with the 1980s and Rekha.

”Fancy” bindis with a variety of patterns and a combination of colours appear in more than a few photographs of the 1930s-1950 and especially in the 1940s. While often seen in mythologicals and devotionals, they were also worn by women with urban fashions. The bindis could presumably be painted on.

In the pics: Sushila Rani, Nalini Jaywant.