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| Sunday, 5 February 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Glitter now in vogue by Lakmal Welabada
Fashion, styles and trends rotate almost every quarter century. Beads and sequins which have been used only on bridals and maids' and flower-girls' outfits, and since recently have been in fashion adding an enticing glitter to everyone who wears them. "The trend 'seen all-over the world is now here' says Charmini Hemachandra, one of the dressmaking experts who have been in the industry for the past 25 years. Not merely beads and sequins, but also tiny colourful glittery stones, are the newest decorative articles seen in fashion at present, in the States, Australia, Japan, England and the whole western world. Except from her immediate neighbouring country India, Sri Lanka gets down these tiny shiny accessories from Singapore, Thailand, China and Dubai.
Mohomed Fazzal who works at 'Sequence', Main Street has mastered the making costume jewellery for the past 16 years. His fingertips are very well seasoned and trained for any kind of fancy costume jewellery. He takes only a few minutes to turn out a beautiful necklace for his female customers, who are queuing beside him with many novel ideas they have picked up from a friend or magazine. "There are more than a hundred kinds of beads, pearls, threads, finishing gadgets and other beautiful pieces used for jewellery making.
"I have self learned and mastered many knots and methods in costume jewellery making," says Fazzal who conducts training lessons without hiding anything from his customers, while attending to sales. He is willing to teach what he has learnt all these years, if he is given an opportunity on a TV programme, and also to conduct classes for any entrepreneur. To match with the newest trends in clothes and jewellery, a novel fashionable idea for footwear was launched under a popular local trademark a few days ago. For the beginning, Niluka Perera of 'Fusion Footwear', Boralesgamuwa, has introduced lightweight colourful (rubber) slippers with enthralling bead work and floral work. With this new idea the straps of your normal rubber slippers will be decorated in such a way that you would not feel like wetting them in a bathroom. Instead, they will be boastfully worn for outings. The rubber slippers which have been unnoticeable all this time, will be dragged into the local fashion market with Niluka's new fusion in fashion footwear. Not only rubber slippers, but also a variety of leather and cloth footwear with a variety of beads and sequin work are now available for fashion conscious minds for the price range of Rs. 250 - Rs. 1200. The fancy shops are filled with people (mainly women) who are willing to decorate their own dress or who want to make their own costume jewellery, and also those who do both, as a homecraft business, to buy these beautiful embellishments. It seems that the new trend is giving a supportive string to the local crafts industry. New talents could be found among any age group. What they need is a stroke of admiration and a hand of assistance from the responsible sources and authorities. Who knows one day, Sri Lanka will also mark her name in the world map for 'fancy items' like Thailand, Singapore, India and China.
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| Produced by Lake House |
The glittery trend is used not only on blouses, skirts, frocks, sarees,
shalvar kameez and other clothes, but also on footwear, handbags, belts,
hair-bands, hats and household linen like cushion covers. Jewellery made of
beads, sequins, stones and other similar accessories introduced newly to the
market have also been captivating every other young, mid and old aged
'woman' today. 
Though these accessories can be imported in each and every colour that is
under the sky, the fast moving demand is still for gold and silver. Also the
knots and patterns used in turning out jewellery need expertise training.
