Although Bangladesh is the second-largest readymade garment exporters in the world, the country’s own fashion industry remains in dire straits due to the incursion of imported apparels and fabrics.
The local fashion industry is not growing also due to the lack of proper planning, absence of research and development, low design quality, lack of government policy support and absence of quality teachers and curriculums in the country’s fashion design schools.
Many shopping malls and markets in Dhaka as elsewhere across the country are selling foreign clothing items imported mainly from India and Pakistan, with a large number of smuggled products coming through land ports evading taxes.
‘Aarong has set an example that our people want to buy local products as the brand ensures quality of fabrics and design. The quality and design of its products are good…Few others produce quality items as they prefer Indian and Pakistani dresses over local products,’ Fashion Design Council of Bangladesh founder-president Maheen Khan told New Age on Monday.
She pointed out that the lack of proper planning, work environment, investment, and policy support were the main hurdle for local fashion producers.
She also said that many export-oriented garment owners established local fashion brands and were just sewing dresses with raw materials imported from foreign countries, mainly China.
‘It is easy to import products and sell them to consumers here. But establishing a fashion houses requires setting up an entire production process, up to the display of the items, along with research and development,’ Maheen Khan said.
According to industry insiders, the lack of government policy support, high import cost of raw materials, absence of design and development facilities in most of the local fashion houses, declining number of weavers due to low wages, academic fashion design curriculum not matching requirements of professional careers were the major barriers to the growth of the local clothing industry.
Most of the country’s local fashion houses do not have design studios and those who have such studios largely ignore R and D, they observed.
Centre for Policy Dialogue research director Khondaker Golam Moazzem said, ‘Finished clothing products come from India and Pakistan through land ports while half of the goods are not declared in the customs. As a result, the government doesn’t receive the tax as well.’
He said that finished products also came from Thailand and China.
‘Bangladesh produces the world’s finest denim and other clothing items. But local fashion houses import fabrics from China and India. Most players in our local fashion industry hanker after making money. Some claim that they make 100 per cent local items, but it is false and they deceive the buyers,’ National Crafts Council of Bangladesh general secretary SK Saifur Rahman told New Age on Sunday.
Asked why no Bangladeshi fashion house could become an international brand, he said that there was no such vision among the country’s owners.
‘If they had such a vision, they would have worked on research and development and designed original and quality fabrics, in addition to producing cotton and yarn, so that their products could have a place on the world market,’ he added.
Deshidosh, an umbrella for 10 fashion houses including Nipun, Anjan’s, Banglar Mela, Bibiana, Nogordola, Kay Kraft, Rang Bangladesh, Sadakalo, Deshal and Srishty, works for promoting local fabric and design.
But nowadays they are using foreign fabrics because of the demand from consumers.
Established in 1993 with the objective to reinvent the country’s fashion and weaving tradition and heritage, Kay Kraft, for quite some time, has been using overseas fabrics to cater to what it said consumer demand.
Kay Kraft managing partner Khalid Mahmood Khan said, ‘We have been using foreign fabrics for the past five years due to people’s demand. But still we try to use mostly local fabrics.’
According to Ashrafur Rahman Faruq, managing director of Nipun Crafts Ltd, local textile industries cannot produce quality cotton in their spinning mills targeting the local market.
‘We need to engage quality designers for spinning and textile mills so that the quality of cotton and fabrics can be improved,’ he added.
He also emphasised research and development in the textile and cotton factories.
Bangladesh Textile Mills Association vice-president Abdullah Al Mamun said, ‘We have started producing traditional clothing in recent years, which is not adequate at all. The fabrics for local and export markets are totally different.’
According to him, their export-oriented factories produce fabrics mostly targeted for Europe and the United States while local-market fabrics require an ambiance of [Indian] subcontinental traditions.
‘The size of the country’s local fashion market is not big. This is why textile owners don’t want to invest in a big way. We have started and it will grow gradually,’ explained Mamun, also director of Abed Textile Processing Mills Limited.
According to National Crafts Council of Bangladesh general secretary SK Saifur Rahman, about 60 per cent of the country’s local fashion houses do not have any design studio.
‘The rest 40 per cent, which do have design studios, largely ignore research and development. Owners draw a box for designers to work out or derive designs from those in the box and this practice also hampers their creativity,’ he said.
Local fashion house owners themselves, he went on to say, don’t have the capacity to produce world class merchandise to grab the attention of foreign buyers.
Mirpur Banarasi Palli in the capital was once known for crafting some of the most beautiful and finest saris, which drew attention of Bollywood filmmakers among others.
The hand-woven banarasi silk saris that featured intricate motifs and a generous use of gold or silver zaris or threads and opulent embroideries were mostly preferred by brides seeking to make a statement in their wedding.
Nowadays, most of the Mirpur Banarasi Palli showrooms sell Indian and Pakistani products and some even put the signs advertising such products in front of their shops.
Mohammad Shahjahan, a banarasi sari factory owner, said, ‘Shop owners at the Banarasi Palli don’t even want to have a look at our quality products. They always go for low-quality Indian items for a higher profit margin.’
He said that if the situation continued like this, whatever small number of hand-woven factories is still there would vanish soon.
‘We are now treated like losers. But once, our saris were exported to India — we had such a rich tradition and glory,’ he recalled.
Mohammad Kashem, Banarasi Palli Shop Owners Association secretary, said that they mostly imported Indian products from India and Pakistani products from Dubai.
Asked why they don’t allow local saris to have a place at their big market place, he said, ‘We are not in a position to save our rich tradition of banarasi saris due to lack of government patronisation, including a place for weavers and necessary assistances. We are not happy to sell Indian products, while once, even in the 90’s, we used to export our saris to India. Weavers and handloom industries are on the decline.’
He disclosed that many weavers had, meanwhile, switched to other professions as well for survival.
‘The Indian government provides subsidy to weavers in the form of subsidised electricity for power looms, but in Bangladesh they fall in the category of commercial use paying high tariff for electricity,’ he despaired.
There is no alternative to government support for reviving the glory of the country’s high quality banarasi saris, he went on to say.
A 75-year-old weaver named Mohammad Yousuf who has been weaving banarasi saris over the past 50 years was found at the Mirpur Bihari camp.
‘Although our saris are better in quality than those from India, there is no demand for them. The shops are selling Indian saris for more profit. We are living a miserable life. We can hardly have two square meals a day due to our financial condition,’ Yousuf told New Age.
Saying that he is an illiterate man in a frustrated voice, Yousuf disclosed that he did not know any other work except weaving, which forced him to remain in the profession despite financial hardship and humiliation.
Weavers said that many of their fellows had become rickshaw pullers while some ran tea stalls and others do various odd jobs.
Some of them are still languishing in their old profession as they don’t know any other work, they said.
‘The demand for our hand-woven saris has hit a low. These days we receive between only Tk 1,600 and Tk 1,900 for weaving a sari. Doing a sari requires at least 10 days. How can we make a living with this earning?’ said another Banarasi sari weaver named Md Parvez at Mirpur.
The Handloom Census 2018, carried out by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, showed that the number of handloom weavers went down by seven lakh from 1990 to 2018.
While 10,27,407 people were engaged in the handloom industry in 1990, the figure came down to 8, 88,115 in 2003 and to 3, 01,757 in 2018.
Handloom Board chairman Yusuf Ali said that they were working to stand by weavers, but they (weavers) were not united.
‘If weavers put pressure on us in a united manner, we will have to work for them. There is no effective union for them and they are now divided in many groups. There is the Jatiya Tanti Samity, which is patronised by the government, not the weavers,’ he said.
Asked about the samity’s initiative for relocating weavers to Bhasantek, Mirpur, he said that they were building a ‘Tanti Palli (Weavers’ Village)’ at Zanjira, Shariatpur.
However, jamdani sari weavers said that they had been doing well for the past two years compared to earlier times.
Mohammad Sajib, a jamdani weaver at Narayanganj, said, ‘We are doing well for the past couple of years. Our condition would have been much better if the Indian products were banned.’
He said that Indian products had reduced the demand for their items.
Many fashion designers, however, expressed dissatisfaction that they had to work with boxes of outside samples provided by their authorities in order to cater to the ‘popular demand’.
Chandra Shekhar Saha, one of the pathfinders in modern fashion craft and textile design in Bangladesh, began his professional career with Aarong in 1980.
He observed, ‘The country’s local fashion industry could meet the demand from somet three crore people out of the 20 crore. Nowadays, people are choosing lehengas instead of banarasi saris for weeding. They are now being influenced by satellites and internet.’
‘Why should consumers buy dresses (from India or Pakistan), which are like rotten fishes?’ asked Chandra Shekhar.
‘Fashion designers have to work according to the choice of their employers,’ he said, adding that there are only a handful of designers in the country who succeeded in establishing own brands because of their imagination, creativity and hard work.
Businessmen are doing business and designers are following their orders, he further said.
Designers and fashion house owners, too, raised the question as to why no local clothing brands from Bangladesh could leave a mark in the global arena and promote our rich tradition and culture.
Fashion house owners, designers and experts all said that only local brand Aarong succeeded in establishing itself as an international brand.
According to them too, local clothing brand owners don’t have the will to reach the International level.
Lubnan Trade Consortium Limited’s fashion design section senior manager Md Mustafa Mosabber Jewel said, ‘We have 123 outlets running across the country under the banners of Lubnan, Richman and Infinity. Local fashion brands don’t have any will to establish international brands.’
He said that they were gradually trying to reduce their imports, including finished goods and fabrics.
Aarong fashion designer Md Roman Hossain said, ‘We are not copying Indian or Pakistani designs. Our designs are our own creation. We made a Tk 1,000 crore profit last year and expect to make between Tk 1,200 and Tk 1,500 crore this year.’
He said that the curriculum followed by local fashion schools did not match the local fashion house work practice.
