And they get bolder with the years. When Nancy joined college, she bought a pair of black low-waist jeans from Fade Out, a shop known in those days as the most up-to-date when it came to stocking denim wear. It cost her much of her savings.
Nancy invests in her jeans most of the Rs 7,000 she earns every month at a diamond store’s back office where she works part-time.
She frequents Chandu’s Western Wear for Women near Swaroop Nagar where she can get what she wants for a cheaper sum.

HEM AND HAW
Chand Alam resists from lecturing his customers on modesty. When women push fashion magazines in front of him, asking him to stitch ultra low-waist jeans that barely have an inch-long zip, he tries keeping a straight face. No point convincing the girls who want to look like poster girls to dress modestly, he says.
“If you try to impose a certain length, customers won’t like it. They want to look like filmstars. Girls here can’t do without jeans,” he says. “Ban or no ban, jeans will still sell.” A year ago, Alam didn’t have any such dilemmas. He used to stitch men’s trousers then. But when he saw women wearing jeans everywhere, he decided to switch from tailoring trousers for men to cutting out denim for women. A year after this switchover, jeans fashion underwent a transformation. “The waist just gets lower,” says Alam.

When Alam betrayed his kind to tailor jeans for the fairer sex, he was the first tailor in Kanpur to take the plunge. And it was worth the risk. He and Abdul Rauf, the other tailor at the shop, have a deluge of orders.
“We get at least five orders a day,”says Rauf, as Nancy walks into the store, a fashion magazine in her hand. “There’s no time to relax,” he says. Clearly, a ban on jeans has not given Alam and Rauf a break.

... contd.