For these Indian streetwear labels, it’s about flaunting your roots

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. At this moment, if you search for streetwear fashion online, you’d be spoilt for choice. T-shirts, shirts, dresses, featuring quirky prints and slogans—the basic building blocks of streetwear—are one too many.

While the options can make any shopper giddy, there is also a sameness that leaves you underwhelmed, especially if you are looking for something unique. It was a need for clothes that looked different that got Goa-based couple Rene Verma, 37, and Vaibhav Sharma, 45, to start Siesta o’Clock in 2019. Lifestyle journalists at the time, they didn’t have to think too hard about the theme of their label.

Having made Goa their home around 2018 courtesy their jobs, they decided to make clothes that “celebrated the rich culture of Goa". The first batch of shirts they made that year featured prints of the popular Fontainhas Windows and Goan drinks, feni and urak. “The shirts were bought by our family and friends.

We then created an Instagram page where we’d get requests," says Rene. They decided to make their side-hustle a full-time label and job in 2020. Four years on, the label, with a price range of ₹1,290-4,980, sells printed shirts for men, womenswear and kidswear.

The USP remains the same: every silhouette sports prints that tell the Goa story, whether it’s the aboli flowers, the Goan bread poie or vignettes from Mapusa market. For Kochi-based Anjali Asok, 27, a DIY experiment of making two hand-painted shirts for a holiday in early 2023 turned into the streetwear label, House of Urmi, later that year. The products she designs highlight the “roots and history of Malabar".