Most of the cloth on our shelf travels a long way to reach Sardar Patel Road. Arvind does not, and that is a point in its favour rather than against it. This is a mill in Ahmedabad that has been weaving fine cotton since 1931, that today makes shirting good enough to sit in the same conversation as the European houses, and that will get a bolt to us in days rather than weeks. For a customer who wants six good work shirts without waiting on an import, this is usually where we start.
1931, and a bet against the obvious
Arvind was founded in 1931 by Kasturbhai Lalbhai with his brothers Chhotalal and Narottam, in Ahmedabad. The timing looked like madness. The Swadeshi movement was in full cry, fine and superfine cloth imported from England was being boycotted across the country, and the sensible reading was that the market for high-end fabric had just evaporated.
The Lalbhais read it the other way. The demand for fine cloth had not gone anywhere. What had gone was the willingness to buy it from England. Any Indian mill that could actually weave to that standard would have the field to itself. So they capitalised the company at a little over twenty-five lakh rupees, bought the best machinery available, and set out to make superfine fabric in Gujarat.
By 1934 the company was among the foremost textile units in the country. It is worth remembering that the whole enterprise rested on a conviction that Indian mills need not be the cheap option, which is a conviction we recognise in our own trade.
Santej, and the shirting we actually buy
In 1997 Arvind commissioned a shirting, gabardine and knits facility at Santej, near Kalol, the largest of its kind in India at the time and built to a capacity of around 34 million metres. That plant is the reason Arvind shirting is worth your attention rather than merely worth its price.
The part that matters to a shirtmaker is the fine end of the book. Arvind weave and process over 40 million metres of fine voiles a year, in counts running up to 140s. A 140s voile is a genuinely fine cloth by any standard, and in Chennai a voile is often the correct answer rather than the compromise: it is light, it breathes, and it does not sit on the skin the way a heavier poplin does in April.
Beyond the voiles they weave cotton in the whole working vocabulary, plus linen, viscose, modal and Tencel blends, with the finishes that keep a shirt wearable through a working day. The colour and stripe range is wide enough that we can usually match what a customer has in mind without sending them to a European bunch.
Denim and bottomweights, and what they are good for
Arvind is the largest producer of denim in India, and it also weaves bottomweight cotton, the khaki and gabardine family that trousers are cut from. Neither is suiting cloth and we will not pretend otherwise.
They are, however, exactly right for a set of trousers you will wear far more often than a suit. A pair of well-cut cotton trousers in an Arvind bottomweight, made to your measurements rather than bought off a rack in a standard rise, is one of the more useful things we make and one of the least expensive. Customers who come to us for a wedding suit often end up ordering three pairs of these afterwards.
When we put you in Arvind
We will be straight about where this belongs. For the formal occasion shirt, the one worn under a bandhgala at a reception or with a dark suit at a function, we would rather put you in Thomas Mason, Alumo or Anderson. Those cloths hold a collar and a press in a way that shows in photographs.
For the shirts you actually live in, the five that go through the wash every week and get worn to work in Chennai heat, Arvind is a serious choice and often the better one. The fine voiles in particular do something the heavier European poplins cannot, which is stay comfortable through an afternoon in this city.
There is also the plain practical argument. Arvind cloth reaches us quickly. If you need six shirts before a trip and the timeline is tight, this is the book we open, and we can say yes to a date rather than hedge about shipping.
Arvind cloth is available to order through us. Come in and handle a 140s voile next to a European poplin. The difference in weight is obvious in your hand, and it tells you most of what you need to decide.