HYDERABAD: Well known for its durability, elegant styles and colourful designs, the Peshawari chappal has become a fashion statement with popular brands of clothing in the vicinity and suburbs of the city. The love and admiration for the chappal all over the country can be gauged by the fact that a large number of Pakistani men wear the pair of traditional footwear.
It is usually worn with shalwar kameez, but recently the sale of Peshawari chappals by popular clothing brands have turned them into latest fashion trends, and is now commonly worn by men with jeans and trousers.
The footwear comes in a wide array of designs that are available at various prices in all parts of the country. The top-notch quality of the chappals is made in Charsadda and Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The traders prefer to buy consignments of the footwear from the popular manufacturers of KP.
The traditional footwear traces its origin in Peshawar. The genuine quality chappal is made from pure leather sewn onto a rubber tyre sole. The more expensive ones are sewn on pure leather soles.
The manufacturers of the replicas of the original Peshawari footwear use Rexine or artificial leather to reduce the cost of production as well as the sale price to attract buyers with lower incomes. “A low-quality chappal can be bought between Rs600 to Rs700”, said Amjad, a worker at a shop at the Nai Pul market. “But we tell buyers that such chappals have a life of not more than two to three months. Consider them as disposable items”, he further informed.
However, a good quality pair of the Peshawari chappal ranges between Rs3,500 to Rs5,000, while the lesser quality stuff is made from low-quality Rexine or artificial leather, and instead of the new tyres, old and worn-out tyres are used in the soles of such footwear. Hand stitching is replaced with cheap binding adhesives.
Khadim, a salesman at a shoe shop, said the pure leather does not harm skin or bones even if a person walks for long distances or for a long time. “The cheaper quality chappals can be harmful if worn for long hours. But we have to sell the low varieties as well because many buyers cannot afford the original thing”, he added.
Imran Khan Awan, who runs a shop at Nai Pul, said that the footwear made in Charsadda is more exquisite than chappals from Peshawar. Nevertheless, the market share of the latter was far higher than the former which were expensive products, he added.
“According to an estimate more than 80 per cent of the chappals that are brought to this Nai Pul market come from Peshawar”, he informed.
Awan also informed that some local traders had invested in the manufacturing of the chappals in Hyderabad but the production was not up to the mark.
“Some manufacturing units still exist at the cottage industries behind the Nai Pul area, but the cost of purchase from Peshawar as well as the quality cannot be matched”, he said.
A worker of his shop displayed two different pairs of the Naorozi variety of the Peshawari footwear, and explained the difference in the variety with the local version of the chappal outshining the one made in KP. “There is a negligible difference in the prices of these two pairs of the Naorozi, but if you look at the quality, they are poles apart”, he claimed. These chappals come in various shapes including the narrow, broad, Panjaidar, and the T-shapes, slipper and sandals.
They are made in plain and elegant styles as well as in colourful variety, boasting intricate work in golden and silver threads. The durability of the footwear depends on how many times it is sewn from one to three tiers of stitching on them.—APP
