2016 Apr 10
by Anuki Premachandra
With Avurudu just around the corner, I bet most of you are trying to come up with some last minute outfit ideas to wear for maybe your school/office Avurudu ceremonies or the annual Avurudu lunches where you meet with your relatives that you would typically get to only see once a year. The struggle to find an outfit in a colour tone you like that also looks equally Sri Lankan, and one that blends in with the festivities spirit, is a struggle. Specially because there really aint that many options to choose from. Alright, for those of you who didn’t know, this year’s Avurudu colour is light green. The colour for this year is more descriptively put forth as the colours and hues of blooming plants, in simpler forms, a lighter-but-not-so-light shade of green. With that in mind, let’s try and get some ensemble ideas together that’ll maybe inspire your Avurudu outfit for this year. Comment below and let us know your ideas for your Avurudu outfit this year!
Women
Reddai Hattei
The ultimate Sri Lankan Avurudu outfit. You can never go wrong with a reddai hattei, well of course unless the hattei is too short, and in that case, the aunties wouldn’t really appreciate it. For the Non-Sri Lankans completely confused, let me clarify this outfit ensemble for you. A reddai hattei is a Sri Lankan dress style that emerged long ago (at least I think it did). The top looks like a saree jacket and the skirt is one with a frill. Sounds funny, but trust me, it doesn’t look as bad as the description I provided for it. You can go with the typical ‘cheetha’ material, this translated would be a floral material, or you could add a modern twist to it and go with a material with an abstract design or a batik. Batik’s too have now become quite the ‘typical’. The reddai hattei in handloom material also looks absolutely stunning because the material looks elegant and drapes beautifully. If you want to get a custom made one, you need to hurry up, nut if not, there’s a handful of shops that sell ready-made reddai hattei outfits.
Linen kurtha and Lungi
This is for those of you who would rather want to stay out of the hassle of having to wear a reddai hattei, a linen kurtha and lungi, another Sri Lankan favourite. This is for those of you who trying to find something to wear the day before your avurudu uthsawe. When I say linen, I typically mean handloom kurthas and lungis. Finding this outfit is pretty easy, all you have to do is walk into a store that sells handloom products or linen products and they are bound to have kurthas and lungis, and what’s even better is that in most of these stores, you don’t have to pick a lungi and go through the trouble of finding a kurtha/top to match it or vice versa. Most these places have the two items sold together. Handloom materials have beautiful hues, go for a colour that complements your skin tine well.
Crop and lungi
So this is the teenage twist on the typical top and lungi. By far, one of the best transformations of the typical Avurudu ensemble I’ve seen. The first time I saw this was maybe about 2 years ago on Instagram when one of my friends wore a lungi and a crop top for her school’s Avurudu ceremony. I thought it was a brilliant twist on the outfit itself and saw it experimented upon a couple of times afterwards too. Have a crop top you like? Pair it up with a linen lungi, try and go for a plain coloured linen lungi with a crop top with maybe designs or simplistic patterns. To not make it ‘slutty’ make sure your crop top isn’t too short and you don’t wear the lungi way under your hip, this way, your school wouldn’t have a problem either. This outfit works well for the younger crowd than the former two that works well for the middle and older aged ladies.
