CHATTOGRAM: Like last year, dress-makers and fashion designers in the port city are facing a tough time in this Eid season due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.
In 2020, tailors faced financial hardship amid a series of lockdown during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic with their earnings in the two largest festivals, Eid-ul-Fitre and Eid-ul-Azha, coming down to almost zero for want of customers as most tailoring shops and fashion houses remained closed for multiple months.
Although all super markets and shopping malls reopened on Sunday, tailor shops and fashion houses which brimmed with customers in every Ramadan month, have remained closed this year too amid strict nature of restrictions on the business during the peak season ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr.
There was no business in the last three weeks and like last year, tailoring shops and tailors will suffer unrecoverable economic losses during the Eid season, said proprietor of a fashion house.
Like other many facilities, tailor shops had to close down after the government clamped the first phase of the series of week-long shutdown on Apr 5, said another tailor shop owner.
Many dress-makers, who came to Chattogram from other districts and were working here before the three-week-long lockdown imposed, returned to the port city in the last couple of days hoping to rejoin their duties as markets and shopping centres opened from Sunday complying with health rules.
But they are passing their days idle as most of the tailor shops remained shut.
Some dress-makers said, customers usually start buying cloths and place order for making Eid attires at tailor shops one week before beginning of Ramadan or in the first and second weeks of the month.
But this year, the Eid customers could not place their order to the tailors as they could not buy cloths for making their attires as the lockdown had been imposed 10 days before the start of Ramadan and was continuing till Monday in a relaxed from.
Sources said, now there are over 6,000 tailors at the city's Khalipha Potty, who returned to the city in the last few days, waiting for either rejoining their old workplace or find a new job elsewhere after remaining jobless for almost one month.
According to the sources, there are more than 12,000 tailor shops in the port city where several thousand tailors make dresses for the city-dwellers. There are also some renowned chain shops and prominent fashion houses in the city.
Of these, Khwaja, Century, Elegant, Ferdous, Boro Shaheb, Chhoto Shaheb, Men's Club, I Fashion, Dorji Bari, Friends Tailors & Fabrics, Ibrahim Tailors & Fabrics, Sadia Ladies Tailors, Antora Ladies Tailors, Nure Ladies Tailors, Syma Ladies Tailors, Soudia Ladies Tailors are popular among the fashion lovers.
Among them, upscale tailor shops in posh areas could not entertain any order till Monday as the business entities were closed due to lockdown.
Many customers in those areas were waiting for opening of the shops hoping that the lockdown would be withdrawn after the current one ends on Apr 29.
Shamima Akter, a housewife, said she used to place order to tailors one or two weeks before Ramadan. "But we could not give order till Monday after buying cloths two days back," she said.
Jyotsna Begum, a teacher of a city school and also a homemaker, said, "We used to give order for dresses to tailors before Ramadan. But, we have not given any order till Monday as tailoring shops did not open."
Khalipha Potty is a tailor's area in Chattogram. City's posh tailoring shops get their clothes stitched from numerous dress-making factories at the Khalipha Potty.
But this time, thousands of stitching machines have remained idle here for a long time with the fashion designers waiting to restart their business once the lockdown is lifted.
