The History of The Bengal Stripe
A bit of personal history, and why I write this newsletter.
I started this newsletter in January 2022 as an outlet to dispense my thoughts on personal style. But really, The Bengal Stripe began back in 2010 on Blogspot, and after that, it was a Tumblr account I used as a mood board, which continues on Instagram to this day. I joined Tumblr in 2008 to repost images I’d been saving from menswear messageboards like superfuture and Styleforum after finding that the upload process was easier than on FFFFOUND!, and finding there was a community of like-minded people doing the same. It’s where I met so many of the menswear industry juggernauts today and first found my own footing in men’s fashion. The truth is, the internet is where I found myself.
For most of my life, my identity has felt fragmented. I was born just outside of Jersey City to Anglo-Indian and Mexican-American parents. We moved to Bedford Village, New York, when my sister was born two years later, and for a time, I had a pretty idyllic childhood. Bedford Village is a tiny cutout section of a hamlet in the township of Bedford, which also includes Katonah and Bedford Hills—an important distinction. It’s the historic district of one of the WASPiest enclaves of America, the circumstances of which I don’t think my working-class parents were fully aware of when they moved to a converted barn on its outskirts. Growing up, I was surrounded by the particular Americana that Ralph Lauren’s Country and Polo lines have long aimed to evoke. It’s where his estate still exists to this day.
As a kid, those traditional menswear codes—pique polos, oxford cloth button-downs, rumpled khakis, gold-buttoned blazers, and repp-striped ties, were pretty much ingrained in me through osmosis. But being part of a nearly invisible ethnic minority, I quickly realized I could never fit neatly into that mold. I learned to be a quiet observer, taking it all in and doing my best not to stand out—a reflection of the techniques my Anglo-Indian grandparents took on when they moved to this country without any sense of family or community to cling to. My grandfather was as dapper as anyone’s and seemed to have developed a keen sense of humor, wit, and charm as a survival mechanism when his mother died and he was sent off to be raised in a convent in Chennai. In fact, apart from his kindness and generosity, the comments on his obituary tend to mention these traits the most. He encouraged my love for the written word and the idea that a life in service to others was the most noble pursuit. Growing up, regular visits maintained a closeness to him and the rest of my dad’s family in New Jersey, as well as with my mom’s family in California, both of which helped anchor my cultural identity, albeit in different directions. Among peers and family, my appearance and my personal taste would remain the subject of constant commentary, both positive and negative— but I was often derided on both sides for anything unconventional. It stressed me out that I could never quite fit in anywhere, and this sense of otherness consumed me.
I found solace through creative pursuits, eventually building my own computer and customizing its user interface. I learned basic graphic design through message boards and a pirated copy of Photoshop and began creating MySpace and LiveJournal themes for friends. Those nascent days of social media became a springboard for my first real friendships as an adult—bonding over a shared love of art, music, movies, and, eventually, fashion. The dam broke one day in 2004 when a friend in a photography community posted a black-and-white self-portrait in which he was wearing a Helmut Lang overcoat buttoned up over APC jeans and Hedi Slimane’s Dior Homme Chelsea boots. I’d never heard of any of these designers—the pinnacle of fashion for me at that time was American Apparel, Cheap Monday, and SB Dunks. The more I unraveled the lore around them, the deeper down the rabbit hole I kept going: Raf Simons, Martin Margiela, Tim Coppens, Thom Browne, Band of Outsiders, and eventually stumbling onto Uniqlo which had only one shop in the US (in SoHo) but offered cheap but well-made derivatives of the skinny jeans, slim button-downs, and narrow notch lapel blazers that I, a 16-year-old emo kid, now lusted after. I learned about the history of avant-garde fashion through threads on Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto, and Ann Demuelemeester, and the more contemporary freaks like Rick Owens, Junya Watanabe, and Errolson Hugh at Acronym. This fractal wormhole I had fallen down unlocked an irrepressible interest in a field that, at the time, was still seen as something effeminate and self-absorbed (then termed metrosexual). I think a part of me relished its subversive nature and the idea of turning that connotation on its head. I dove into the idea of clothing as identity—the idea that the right piece—a grail—could feel like armor, self-expression, or even rebellion.
That passion ultimately became my lifework. While in college, I started one of the first Tumblr mood boards with a focus on men’s fashion (and cheeky humor and half-nude girls), which led to a lot more friendships—many of whom were people within the industry already. I found an internship and a part-time retail gig in Manhattan through those friends, and eventually, my first full-time job for a real menswear brand. I put together physical mood boards, helped pick swatches and develop the line, built relationships with vendors, lugged fabric rolls and bags of trims around the garment district, managed PR contacts, and learned how to conduct fittings for tailored clothing within those first whirlwind, boundaryless (in both senses of the word) years. Down the line, as an early member at Grailed, I found a way to bring that original messageboard culture to the masses; helping connect people to the pieces that mattered most to them, educating and building a community of enthusiasts who saw fashion as an intrinsic part of our culture. A couple of years ago, this newsletter and the credibility I had built helped me land a gig at Buck Mason, where I had the opportunity to focus solely on storytelling — interweaving stories around their values, manufacturing practices, and the inspiration behind each piece in their collection into something as short as a product name or as long as a feature page. Throughout my career, my perspective on style has remained deeply personal, shaped by the cultures I carry, the people I’ve known (and love), and the eras I’ve lived through, and it’s the one thing that I try to ingrain in all of my work.
The Bengal Stripe, to me, is the thread that binds everything I do. Dating back as early as 1680, the Bengal stripe has remained the most popular traditional shirting stripe over the past two centuries. Worn in the 1800s by Bengal Lancers, a regiment of the British Indian Army, it took inspiration from the traditional Indian striped fabrics that would eventually make their way onto European shores, where they found new form as English dress shirts. It is inarguably the most versatile pattern for shirting, providing a complementary backdrop for other traditional patterns like herringbone, houndstooth, tartan, and paisley—an impossibility for nearly any other pattern (except maybe tattersall, but nobody wears that anymore). It’s also the stripe pattern most commonly seen on seersucker fabric. Unlike other stripes, the evergreen appeal of the Bengal stripe has remained true.
I chose this name back when I was 20 because, to me, it connoted classic menswear and my Indian heritage—two facets that have played an enduring influence on my personal style. As I age into it, I’m looking forward to sharing more about the enjoyment of getting dressed and the fulfilling nature of finding interesting components of an outfit and putting them together in a way that feels right. There’s a simplicity I take to this approach thanks to the years of thoughtfulness behind it. Like any craft, it’s something that takes time and devotion to master, and it may never be perfect, but it’s in the pursuit that one finds fulfillment. It’s a journey I’m still on, and it’s something I look forward to continuing to share with you. ❤