Girls check out dresses at a shopping mall in Siliguri. A Telegraph picture

Siliguri, Oct. 9: This Pujas, short is in as far as fashion goes. Short kurtas and short shirts are the preferred sartorial selections of youngsters, and even the not-so-young of Siliguri.

While girls have opted for Patiala pants to go along with the short kurtas, the boys are wearing their short shirts with good old jeans, but in alternative colours. ?There was a great demand for brown and grey-coloured jeans instead of the traditional blue and ash- ones,? said Jai Banerjee, manager operations of Skystar Shopping, which runs the swanky Sunflower departmental store.

In keeping with the shorter sartorial mantra adopted by the fashionable youth, the lengths of the jeans worn by girls have remained sufficiently low and below the navel.

With the corresponding shortening in the length of shirts, the quotient of flesh-display has gone up. ?I am comfortable with the current fashion trend. Everybody is wearing such dresses now, and I am no exception,? said Sweta Gurung, a Delhi-based call centre executive who?s back home on a holiday.

?Youngsters from the Hills are more bold in terms of fashion, but people here are catching up fast. In two years, Siliguri will be right up there (insofar as fashion is concerned),? said Vikram Sheth, manager of Citimart near Bidhan Market.

Another significant trend this time around is that more and more people are opting for branded products, a reflection perhaps of the deepening pockets of the town?s growing middle class. ?Yes, the sale of branded shirts like Arrow, Zodiac and Manyavar and jeans like Hoffmen, Flying Machine and Moustache has been very good,? said Banerjee.

Long after women went desi with ethnic fashion, men have followed suit, albeit belatedly, with kurtas and Punjabi jutis stitching a success story this season. ?Quite frankly, unlike women, we men have very few options. But yes, I have helped myself to two very ethnic kurtas this Pujas,? said C. R. Ghosh, an impeccably dressed man at one of the leading stores of the town.