Men and Shawls
There’s a quiet assumption in a lot of modern menswear that shawls are a women’s accessory men occasionally borrow for warmth. Indian history tells a very different story. For centuries, the shawl was as much a men’s garment as a women’s, worn by emperors, scholars, Sufi saints, and ordinary householders alike. Somewhere in the last century, that history got compressed in popular memory, and it’s worth unpacking why, because the shawl has a lot to offer men willing to look past the assumption.
A Garment That Once Defined Men of Stature
Walk through Mughal miniature paintings and you’ll find emperors and nobles draped in fine pashmina and Kani shawls as a basic part of formal dress, not an accessory reserved for cold mornings. The shawl signalled refinement and rank in the same breath as jewellery or a particular sword. Sikh maharajas continued this tradition enthusiastically, and the practice filtered down through the social order: a well-made shawl was something a man of means owned and wore visibly, the way a well-cut coat works today.
This wasn’t confined to royal courts either. In Kashmir, Punjab, and across the Himalayan belt, the shawl was ordinary daily wear for men managing harsh winters, used as an overcoat, a wrap at home, and sometimes even a light blanket. Its practicality across class lines is part of why it stayed so embedded in male dress for so long.
The Shawl in Spiritual and Scholarly Life
The shawl carried a different kind of weight in religious and intellectual circles. Sufi saints and Hindu ascetics across the subcontinent were frequently depicted wrapped in simple woollen shawls, a visual shorthand for renunciation and spiritual focus rather than luxury. Buddhist monks across Ladakh, Sikkim, and the Northeast have long worn and gifted ceremonial shawls as part of religious practice. In scholarly settings, a fine shawl draped over the shoulders marked a learned man, a pandit, a teacher, a respected elder whose opinion carried weight in the community.
So What Changed?
The honest answer is mostly colonial-era menswear and twentieth-century fashion shifts. As Western tailoring, especially the suit and overcoat, became the dominant marker of male formality across urban India, the shawl was gradually pushed toward "traditional" or "ethnic" wear, brought out for weddings and festivals rather than worn as daily formal dress. Meanwhile, shawls stayed visibly present in women’s fashion through dupattas and stoles, reinforcing an association that had never really existed before.
Where the Shawl Still Holds Its Ground for Men
This shift was never total. Men’s shawls remain completely standard in several contexts. They’re still the default garment of respect in felicitation ceremonies regardless of the recipient’s gender. In Himachal Pradesh, Kullu shawls are everyday winter wear for men of all ages, with no gendered connotation attached. In Kashmir, pashmina shawls and the Pheran combination remain common menswear, especially among older generations. And monks across the Himalayan Buddhist belt continue wearing ceremonial shawls as part of religious life, unaffected by shifts in mainland fashion.
Why It’s Worth Reclaiming Today
For men open to it, a well-made shawl is a genuinely useful addition to a wardrobe: warmer per gram than most jackets, versatile enough to dress up a kurta or layer over a coat, and distinctive in a way most winter outerwear isn’t. It doesn’t need reinvention so much as a reminder that it was never exclusively a women’s garment to begin with. The men who currently wear shawls with the most ease, elders, scholars, monks, are simply continuing a tradition that never actually broke; the rest of us just need to catch up.
