SHAHTOOSH IS OUT, PASHMINA IS IN

It was about a hundred years back in time that Oscar Wilde called fashion a form of ugliness so intolerable that it has to be changed every six months. Were Wilde to be around today to comment on the fading into history of the shahtoosh shawl, he might have made a gorier proclamation.

It is no more chic to drape this shawl woven from wool taken from the Tibetan antelope or chiru.

Yes, days of the shahtoosh shawl being a fashion statement are over. It is a prêt assertion written in gore and blood - the sight of which has moved the global fashion fraternity to rally together to denounce this shawl. It is no more chic to drape this shawl woven from wool taken from the Tibetan antelope or chiru, a highly endangered species found in the higher reaches of the Tibetan Plateau in China.

As many as three chirus are gruesomely slaughtered to stitch together one shahtoosh shawl. Less than 70,000 chirus exist today and 20,000 of these are butchered every year to feed the voracious shahtoosh industry. The shahtoosh wool was once a byproduct of subsistence hunting for meat. When owning a shahtoosh shawl became a status symbol, commercial exploitation of the animal assumed bloody proportions.

It was only a matter of time, before someone said enough is enough. The clarion call to save the chiru came in the form of Wildlife Trust of India and International Fund for Animal Welfare's (WTI/IFAW) global campaign against this stole of doom. The heart-rending cry of the chiru reached out to the fashion fraternity the world over.

In India, the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) was one of the first to lend its support to the campaign. From Aparna Chandra to JJ Valaya, and from Mona Lamba to Rina Dhaka, they have publicly endorsed it all. Ritu Kumar, Gitanjali Kashyap and Kiran Uttam Ghosh are WTI's Ambassadors Against Shahtoosh. They actively work to spread the message against shahtoosh and the elite who still drape these shawls.

The campaign was multi-pronged, but the death knell had to come from the fashion community.

The campaign was multi-pronged, but the death knell had to come from the fashion community. It is superficial vanity that drives sales and since fashion designers have the last word in vanity, their public deploration of shahtoosh at glitzy events like the India Fashion Week served two intentions - the shawl was perceived as a form of ugliness that needed to be shunned forever, and it was no more a prized family heirloom that could be handed down generations.

Trade in the chiru or its derivatives is banned under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). The animal enjoys the highest protection by the laws of China, Nepal and India. Even the government of Jammu and Kashmir, the only production centre of the shawl, has just amended its laws and granted full protection to the Tibetan antelope. Not only slaying the chiru or making a shawl from its wool is illegal, possessing one of these products is too.

But then, just because the shahtoosh shawl has been rendered unusable does not mean one's winter wardrobe will stand depleted or that the bride's trousseau will lose its sheen. The show will go on, with the pashima taking over the mantle from shahtoosh. The pashmina just as well is exquisite, it costs a fat sum too, and yes, it does not carry the stigma of being a shroud. Sometimes fashion statements must be politically correct statements.

Sometimes being fashionable tantamounts to being legally culpable (for possessing a shawl). If the Tibetan antelope is wiped out in the next few years, shawls of shahtoosh will become a vestige of the past. But if you have read this afar you will realise that the shahtoosh shawl will be out of vogue tomorrow anyway. So, just junk it.