My Mrs. Roper–Inspired Dress Is All I Ever Want to Wear
All this to say that I come by my love for the entire category of flowy, vibrant, loose-fitting dresses honestly, possibly even genetically. But the one I return to again and again — which also happens to be the very first thing I put into a gift guide when I started at Wirecutter — is the Silkandmore Cotton Caftan.
I truly don't remember how I discovered the unremarkable and slightly hectic Etsy shop that is Sikandmore, but I suspect I was — surprise! — looking around for affordable caftans to use as swim coverups. I do, however, remember my first one. It was a navy blue striped number, over a decade ago, that first got me hooked on the gossamer lightness and beautiful simplicity of this particular caftan.
The shop offers a bunch of different styles of caftan-like dresses: Some have empire waists and buttons, others are made of jersey knit, and there are also halter maxi dresses, nighties, robes, and maternity items.
But I am loyal to the simple rectangle of lightweight Indian cotton folded lengthwise, sewn down the sides, and featuring a reinforced V-neck and a simple drawstring waist. That's it.
This caftan comes in one size (when laid flat, it measures about 36 inches across, with 11-inch arm openings, and it fits my size-12 body well). And there are a few different lengths based on your height range. There are small slits at each side, and for an extra $5, you can add pockets. I haven't tried the one with pockets, but I've owned a knee-length version, and I prefer the long ones, for more dramatic swishing and sashaying.
Because they are more or less made to order and shipped from India, these caftans can take up to three weeks to arrive. This regular cotton version has been in rotation for at least three years. Samantha Schoech/NYT Wirecutter
Although I first intended to use it as a beach cover-up (and still use it for that), my Silkandmore Caftan's main job is being a house dress. As long as the temperature is above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, this caftan is what I want to be wearing (preferably without a bra, but you do you) while I'm working, lounging, and going about my business at home.
I have also worn it out of the house with a cute pair of platform sandals and a long string of turquoise beads. (But do be aware that the lighter-colored versions can be quite diaphanous.) And on many occasions, I've also worn my caftan as a nightgown.
By my count, I've bought five of these caftans in the past 10 years, and there are two still in circulation. I am not careful with them — I treat them with the delicacy of a beloved pair of sweats. But I do hang them to dry to avoid shrinking them and subjecting them to unnecessary wear and tear. Still, the cotton is so lightweight that it does tend to rip after some years. The side seams also weaken and creep upward, turning modest slits into hip-high ones (though anyone with basic sewing skills could repair this in minutes). The organic cotton version seemed especially delicate and prone to tearing. But this rip only happened after two years of heavy wear. Samantha Schoech/NYT Wirecutter
If I reserved one of these caftans to wear only as a dress outside the house, or used them only while I was at the beach or the pool, I could avoid loving them to death in this way. But that's not the life I want to lead. The life I want to lead has me clad in the thinnest, flowiest cotton, with a cut that barely grazes the body. And although I'm not quite as fond of hallucinatory prints as my grandmother was, I like to think she'd recognize me now as a kindred spirit. As would Mrs. Roper.
This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Catherine Kast.
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Refinery29
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Meet Kulfi, The South Asian-Inspired Beauty Brand Making Waves At Space NK
All linked products are independently selected by our editors. If you purchase any of these products, we may earn a commission. I distinctly remember the day when I was at school and a boy in my maths class slipped me a note. I opened it and staring back at me was a rudimentary caricature of me, only with big, fat caterpillars where my brows should be. I wanted to disappear. The following year, I obsessively tweezed my brows to the point where they were uneven, scrawny husks of their former selves (luckily they grew back) and began shaving my arm hair and bleaching my moustache — even though it made my skin itch like it was on fire. It was one thing to be aware of things I didn't like about myself, but it was as if my worst fear was realised when other people noticed them, too. As a mixed-race Asian-American woman, I felt like I was constantly retaliating against my body's natural tendency towards hairiness; many Japanese women I saw looked as smooth as a dolphin and it made me feel like a beast in comparison. The stigma I experienced as a woman with visible body and facial hair was even heavier with the pressure of Asian beauty standards — and I'm not alone. A similar story inspired Priyanka Ganjoo to create a beauty brand, Kulfi, that celebrates and represents her Indian heritage. One of the brand's launches, Free The Brow, particularly embodies the brand's ethos of celebrating and enhancing your natural features: In addition to defining and enhancing brows in a single sweep, it conditions them with ingredients like vitamin E and sunflower oil. (Before you ask, no: It doesn't tame brows, because spoiler alert — they don't need to be tamed in the first place.) In an interview with R29, Priyanka gets candid about embracing body hair, finding inspiration in South Asian culture and why she's on a mission to make makeup fun again. The following interview was told to Karina Hoshikawa and has been edited for length and clarity. On starting a beauty brand It's wild to me that I started a makeup brand because I didn't even wear makeup until my late 20s. I just felt like it wasn't for me — it was for a certain aesthetic or a certain type of girl that wasn't me. I didn't feel included in that conversation. I did an MBA and got into the beauty industry from a business side at Estée Lauder, and then at Ipsy. I realised that makeup can be really fun, and I started trying things by myself and went on this discovery. I wondered, Are there brands serving South Asian consumers?, both from a product perspective — their undertones, products that address their concerns — but also the community. So I decided to do it myself. I wanted to embrace the fun, playfulness and artistry of makeup. That's what we're called Kulfi. Kulfi is a South Asian ice cream dessert that's colourful, flavorful and delicious. I wanted beauty to feel like that experience, too. It's fun to put on glittery eyeshadow! [It means so much to me] for people to see a brand called Kulfi — which, again, if you're South Asian, you get it immediately — and feel seen in that. On embracing facial & body hair Growing up, I had a lot of facial hair and my brows were made fun of. If you had one piece of hair on your arm, you were teased for it. I grew up in India and it was the case there, too. Even though those were our natural features, we were aggressively trying to get rid of facial hair and have super skinny brows. It took a lot of unlearning for me to embrace my hair like that, which led to Free The Brow. It doesn't just make your brows beautiful and look laminated, but it actually supports and nourishes your brows. Hair oiling is an Indian beauty tradition, where we try to make our hair thicker, longer and more luscious — [ Free The Brow ] is inspired by that but for your brows. I'm so glad we're able to create products like that and have this beautiful campaign. I wanted someone with a unibrow for this campaign, and the model we found applied to our TikTok casting call. She was like, 'I've never touched my brows.' She just walked in so proud of her brows and the result is beautiful. It's such an emotional story to grow up wanting to get rid of all your [facial] hair, and it's kind of crazy how so many of us have had these experiences because we've been trained to think that facial hair is bad, or that thick brows are masculine — like that's inherently negative. On being inspired by South Asian culture We're inspired a lot by South Asian culture and textile art. When we launched the kajal eyeliner, the colours were inspired by saris and the colours we see in clothes: shades like teal and terracotta that we know are flattering on us when we wear [them] but hadn't been translated to makeup. We have this beautiful duochrome shadow in chartreuse with this greenish-gold shift. It's such a unique colour in makeup, but actually, there are a lot of Indian textiles and art that use that colour. Being able to take that inspiration and translate that into makeup is the artistry part of our brand. Most people want to have a black liner in their makeup kit, but what our community also told us is that they're tired of seeing the same shades every brand has to offer. There is this desire for something that helps them experience joy. This is just a starting point. I honestly feel like within the beauty industry, there was this call for diversity and inclusion when Fenty [Beauty] launched, and there was this huge momentum during the Black Lives Matter movement. There's so much work still to be done and shade inclusion is not just about foundation shades, right? It's also about how we create blushes, lipsticks and all these other products that look flattering on a diverse set of skin tones. If you have a deep skin tone, one blush shade shouldn't be the only option you have on the table. There's still so much we have to do and that's what I'm really excited for in the future, to keep kind of pushing those boundaries and keep making beauty fun for everyone. We've received messages where people are like, 'I love that you put someone who looks like me on the campaign because it makes me feel seen,' and 'I didn't see that growing up in a small town where I was the only person of colour.' 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It's a pink-toned purple that looks beautiful on olive undertones and I love that it came from our community not wanting just one mauve option for blush. We're trying to create this assortment of colours that everyone feels welcome to play with and that looks good on a variety of skin tones. Combined with our storytelling and the inspiration we get from South Asian culture, there's so much more we can do.
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
My Mrs. Roper–Inspired Dress Is All I Ever Want to Wear
Long before Mrs. Roper became the poster child for the long, colorful caftan on Three's Company , there was my grandmother — all 4 feet 11 inches of her — clad throughout my childhood in psychedelic muumuus of her own making. She favored paisley prints, West African fabrics popularized by the Black Panther Party, and neon mod florals featuring a shade of fuchsia not found in nature. All this to say that I come by my love for the entire category of flowy, vibrant, loose-fitting dresses honestly, possibly even genetically. But the one I return to again and again — which also happens to be the very first thing I put into a gift guide when I started at Wirecutter — is the Silkandmore Cotton Caftan. I truly don't remember how I discovered the unremarkable and slightly hectic Etsy shop that is Sikandmore, but I suspect I was — surprise! — looking around for affordable caftans to use as swim coverups. I do, however, remember my first one. It was a navy blue striped number, over a decade ago, that first got me hooked on the gossamer lightness and beautiful simplicity of this particular caftan. The shop offers a bunch of different styles of caftan-like dresses: Some have empire waists and buttons, others are made of jersey knit, and there are also halter maxi dresses, nighties, robes, and maternity items. But I am loyal to the simple rectangle of lightweight Indian cotton folded lengthwise, sewn down the sides, and featuring a reinforced V-neck and a simple drawstring waist. That's it. This caftan comes in one size (when laid flat, it measures about 36 inches across, with 11-inch arm openings, and it fits my size-12 body well). And there are a few different lengths based on your height range. There are small slits at each side, and for an extra $5, you can add pockets. I haven't tried the one with pockets, but I've owned a knee-length version, and I prefer the long ones, for more dramatic swishing and sashaying. Because they are more or less made to order and shipped from India, these caftans can take up to three weeks to arrive. This regular cotton version has been in rotation for at least three years. Samantha Schoech/NYT Wirecutter Although I first intended to use it as a beach cover-up (and still use it for that), my Silkandmore Caftan's main job is being a house dress. As long as the temperature is above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, this caftan is what I want to be wearing (preferably without a bra, but you do you) while I'm working, lounging, and going about my business at home. I have also worn it out of the house with a cute pair of platform sandals and a long string of turquoise beads. (But do be aware that the lighter-colored versions can be quite diaphanous.) And on many occasions, I've also worn my caftan as a nightgown. By my count, I've bought five of these caftans in the past 10 years, and there are two still in circulation. I am not careful with them — I treat them with the delicacy of a beloved pair of sweats. But I do hang them to dry to avoid shrinking them and subjecting them to unnecessary wear and tear. Still, the cotton is so lightweight that it does tend to rip after some years. The side seams also weaken and creep upward, turning modest slits into hip-high ones (though anyone with basic sewing skills could repair this in minutes). The organic cotton version seemed especially delicate and prone to tearing. But this rip only happened after two years of heavy wear. Samantha Schoech/NYT Wirecutter If I reserved one of these caftans to wear only as a dress outside the house, or used them only while I was at the beach or the pool, I could avoid loving them to death in this way. But that's not the life I want to lead. The life I want to lead has me clad in the thinnest, flowiest cotton, with a cut that barely grazes the body. And although I'm not quite as fond of hallucinatory prints as my grandmother was, I like to think she'd recognize me now as a kindred spirit. As would Mrs. Roper. This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Catherine Kast.
Time Business News
2 days ago
- Time Business News
The Versatile in Malaysia
The women shirt has managed to be one of the most popular garments in Malaysia, which, unlike in the past, passed beyond the mundane use of an everyday wardrobe item to become a most flexible piece of garment with its capacity to be used through many occasions in a wide range of styles and fitting into multiple cultural contexts. It is versatile not only because of the diversity of the cuts and materials, but also because it creates a connection between tradition and modern fashion. Malaysian women have not resisted this feature of adaptability and hence the women shirt has become their top preference in informal outings, workplace, and formal occasions also. As the country is also characterized by rich cultural diversity with warm tropical climate, the women shirt has become not only a piece of clothing, it has become the symbol of comfort, elegance, and convenience. The fashion of Malaysia is highly influenced by the Malay culture, the Chinese, the Indian cultures and other cultures of the country, creating a multi-ethnical culture combining all these cultures. It can be seen in the difference in the presentation of the women shirt, in which the traditional designs can blend harmoniously with the contemporary lines. As an example, shirts can be decorated with the geometrical or floral patterns derived out of the usage of primitive symbols like geometry of flowers. The traditional attire can affect cut and fit by making slight coverings to keep a modern style as well. The women shirt in Malaysia is used in most cases as a cultural bridge, where wearers are able to capture the heritage as well as being comfortable and convenient in the aspect of modern fashion use. The gowning capacity of the women shirt in Malaysia is one of its main salient features that make it fit in virtually all situations. When used as a casual wear, inexpensive natural fabrics like cotton, linen, or rayon make the outfit light and cool in the tropical climate. Structured collars and plain fabrics of tailored shirts give the message of professionalism with freedom of motion in an office environment. The women shirt may be refined with rich materials such as silk or satin over formal occasion and it may be decorated with simple embroidery or lace touches depending on the level of sophistication and formal occasion. This flexibility implies that a properly selected shirt can be worn all through the day or night, in a business event and a dinner party just by switching accessories or style. The humid and hot weather of Malaysia is the main factor which considers the choice of material included in the shirt of women. Comfortable fabrics, like cotton and linen are most used because they absorb moisture and make the body cool. The wrinkle resistance of light weight combinations of polyester may also be popular because they offer versatility in the busy modern life. Sleeves in the cut and length can be climate conscious, there are short sleeved, three-quarter sleeves, and loose long sleeves that serve to give air passage yet provide coverage. Elastic fitting or having some slits on the sides is incorporated in some designs making them comfortable to move in and not to lose the design factor. Such eco-friendly fashions mean that the women shirt is a universal piece that can be worn throughout the year in Malaysia. The role of modest fashion in the clothing preferences of the Malaysian population cannot be ignored, particularly women trying to adhere to one or another cultural or religious code of dressing. Women shirt provides a perfect compromise of modesty and style that may have long sleeves, high neck, and long hems and be complemented with skirts or trousers. High on the popular list is layering where a shirt is used over an inner top or under a loose cover. The flexibility of the women shirt in modest fashion gives a way to the women to dress according to their wishes and yet pass the modesty test. This universality means that it has gained popularity amongst different people in Malaysia. The women shirt has many different possibilities of styling that is one of the main reasons why it has remained so popular. The oversized shirt may be untucked in order to be worn with a pair of jeans or shorts to get a relaxed weekend street style. To be more presentable, putting the fitted shirt inside the well fitted higher can be the perfect professional look. In more free or fete like situations, one can rock an adventurous patterned shirts with traditional skirts or accessories to make a cultural statement but still follow the trendy fashion. The possibility to turn up or down dress the women in the shirt makes it an asset and a timeless part of any wardrobe addition. The design of women shirt varies in a range of combinations and textures and the numerous colors enable people to fully express themselves in Malaysia. Muted neutrals, such as white, beige and black, are forever and quite easy to match with other pieces of clothing, whereas big prints in a floral, abstract or geometric manner provide an entertaining and noticeable choice. The cultural heritage generally comes in form of prints, which can be used to make shirts thereby enabling users to display their heritage in disguise. The color selection also identifies individual style and even mood as soft pastels produce a delicate and elegant attitude, whereas bright colors brighten the daily wardrobe. The variety of presented patterns and colors guarantees that each woman would find a shirt that would be close to her personality and style. The women shirt is also an effective traveling companion to women in Malaysia. It is easy to style it according to different weather and events during travels. Light cotton shirt would be ideal for sightseeing during the hot weather but a bit more substantial could be used in cooler climates. Tank tops go with shirts which can be layered over dresses or open over tank tops to add more dressing options on the road. Moreover, the convenience when packing wrinkle-free fabrics or quick drying materials makes women shirt a suitable option to take when travelling to ensure style and comfortfulness will be observed all the way. With the trend of fashion in the world moving towards sustenance, the women shirt has settled as a permanent investment accessory. Its classic signature design implies that it does not fall out of fashion easily, so there is a lower necessity to change the wardrobe often. Selecting shirts that are of sustainable materials or artisans that hand print or hand weave the clothes can also help in a greener lifestyle. The versatility of the women shirt makes it easy to minimize unnecessary purchases of clothing, which supports the concept of slow fashion, by owning a few items of very good quality. The women shirt earned its reputation in Malaysia as one of the most versatile and useful pieces of women clothing that is not only age independent but also can be used regardless of gender. The fact that it can be mixed with tradition and modernity, fit the climate in the country, modest fashion tastes, and fit a diverse number of occasions makes it versatile. Whether it is used on a day out in its more casual form, as an office wear piece, or dressed up, the women shirt is fashionable and dependable. What provides this dress with its lasting acclaim is its ability to be timeless as well as contemporary, so that what Malaysian women gain with owning such a dress is the possibility of having a garment, which both suits their lifestyle and celebrates the diverse makeup of the cultural and stylistic world of the country. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
