Around the world in sharees

Do you remember photos of grandmothers in a foreign land in a sharee? Some have those. Perhaps layered up with winter coats but the sharee hems are perfectly visible. 

More suitable in the subcontinent and South Asia – the home to sharees – but not quite the best attire to fight off the cold in North America or Europe. However, the Bangladeshi grandmother would refuse to change into something else. 

"This is not something new," said Tasfia Kabir, currently a PhD candidate at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands specialising in Photonics. "Our grandmothers and mothers used to travel in sharees. There are photos." 

In fact, many South Asian women also chose to stick to sharees when they immigrated to the Global North. There are also tonnes of literary examples. There's Ashima Ganguli in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, where she moves from Calcutta to Massachusetts in the 1960s, there's Nazneen in Monica Ali's Brick Lane, where she moves from Bangladesh to East London in the 1980s – to name two. 

Tasfia was pointing, and I must say humbly, to the fact that her Instagram account "aroundtheworldinsaree" does not feature a first-of-its-kind phenomenon – a Bangladeshi woman in sharees in foreign countries. 

Like Schrödinger's Cat, Tasfia is both correct and incorrect. Because how many Bangladeshi millennial women do you know who don a sharee in a foreign country – especially beyond Asia – during travel as casually as one would in the streets of Dhaka? You probably do not know many or any.

When Tasfia began to wear sharees abroad, it happened organically on her first foreign trip, not "to prove a point or anything," Tasfia recently recounted in a zoom interview. "It was simple. There was a special occasion [in Shenzhen, China], so I wore a sharee," she said.

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. Photo: Courtesy

In 2016, Tasfia was an engineering student at Dhaka University. She was also one of the 10 students who won Huawei's annual Seeds for the Future competition – where Huawei chooses students from Bangladeshi engineering universities to participate in a fully sponsored training in China about technologies developed by the company.

"I started travelling late in life," said Tasfia, who has been living in the Netherlands for about four years now and has travelled to over 30 countries. But she remembers having two epiphanies during the China trip, "I should see more of the world and study abroad."

After a couple of years and travels to India and Turkey by then, Tasfia would be in west-central Italy, "the city of the Leaning Tower of Pisa," said Tasfia.

Between hostel accommodations (more for backpackers and tourists than university students) and finding a place to reside during her master's programme on Erasmus scholarship, she would come to meet fellow travellers. "And it was during one of those days, me and a couple of new friends decided to dress up and go see the tower."

Tasfia wore a sharee. "Jamie [one of the friends] was good with the camera. And she started to take our photos," and it was then she gave sharees in foreign countries a thought. 

In Tirta Empul Holy Water Temple, Bali. Photo: Courtesy

She eventually curated a photo album and put it up on Facebook of herself in sharees in different countries. "I did not realise the 'featured' album on Facebook was public if not changed to private [privacy settings which allow who can view one's content]." And people took notice of that album, which went viral and led Tasfia to create an exclusive space for her sharee diaries around the world. 

In 2019, Tasfia started her Instagram account. It's still a small account (which currently has over 6,000 followers) but the personal posts – some are from past events and/or across Bangladesh – seem to tell a well-curated story in over only 150 posts. 

Have you noticed an increase in female Bangladeshi travellers? "I think there has been a big shift. Maybe in the last 10 years," she replied, adding how it's been more pronounced in the last 5-6 years. "People are being more open to women travelling abroad, studying abroad. And not just young women, but the older generation as well.

"Older women who never thought of travelling alone are – [for instance] women in the 50s – travelling by themselves." 

From attending a Coldplay concert in Brussels in sharee, Brooklyn Bridge last year to a red Jamdani wedding sharee amplifying Bangladeshi woven heritage and why she chose it for her big day – and many more sharee snippets — a couple of things become evident: Tasfia's love for the garment and slow fashion. 

In one of her Instagram posts featuring Paris, she said how she would only put on sharees from brands dedicated to slow fashion such as Menka. "When we buy sharee, we [tend to] buy conscious products. If one moves towards handloom and buys sharee, buy conscious products, and think, consciously for travelling – I think at some point, one can't really buy so many [clothes]," explained Tasfia. 

In Paris. Photo: Courtesy

Repeat outfits, rather than get pulled in the world of fast fashion during travel.  "It's more about being present at the moment," she said, "to be enjoyed, devoured." 

"Italy was a great place to travel about in sarees," she recalled, fondly describing the spring in her steps in sharees. 

Also, another misconception is 'sharees are uncomfortable or hard to manage.' For someone vested in handloom sharees, Tasfia believes comfortable choices are available to us, we only need to embrace them. 

Tasfia is aware of her privilege to travel. "But you also need to understand, travelling within Europe is actually a lot easier [most of the countries she visited are European]. They have had the infrastructure for travel set up for centuries now," she said. 

In one of her Instagram posts, she also makes it clear how travel within Europe is easy and what the followers are getting to see are a result of her work as a PhD candidate — which facilitates the travels for the most part. 

In Switzerland. Photo: Courtesy

Tasfia wants to travel next to Iceland, sang high praise of Croatia and also plans to visit Tanzania, "I have friends there," she said, who also made it clear to her followers on her IG account that she opts to travel cheap and the account is not one for fashion inspiration. Probably not for the general Bangladeshi women travelling around the world, but her Instagram post featuring a leather jacket with her sharee in Switzerland begs to differ.