Teresa Nielsen Hayden has discovered a whole crew of custom sari-manufacturers in India selling direct to the Western market — hell, the global market — with eBay. Because of eBay's rules, there's a weird polite fiction that they're selling you some cloth and throwing in the actual making of the garment as a kind of freebie, but this is a really cool maker-to-wearer business that's cutting out hundreds of intermediaries. Teresa's produced a guide to buying Indian garments these ways that's absolutely fascinating.
There are three signs to look for. First, if the listing says any size, it usually means they're making clothing to order, but might mean they're selling the same model in multiple sizes. Second, the accompanying photo shows, not finished garments, but two or three pieces of color-coordinated fabric wrapped around a dressmaker's form. Not all bespoke-tailoring vendors do this, but all the vendors who do it are selling bespoke tailoring. The third and infallible sign is that they ask you for your measurements.
The base price for a made-to-order three-piece salwar kameez starts around $30 for something simple in a cotton or synthetic fabric, and goes up to the lower-middle three digits for wedding garments so dense with gold embroidery that they mess up flash photography. Shipping runs around $12-$25, so check before you bid.
Report on the experiment:
Using the proceeds of my CafePress t-shirt sales, I ordered three salwar kameez (kameezi? kameezes?) from three different vendors. Only one auction was contested. The average purchase price was $39.00.
All three purchases arrived within two weeks. All three fit. All three vendors misunderstood or ignored my request for elbow-length sleeves, but they all got the trousers right (nipped in at the ankle, with a small cuff).
