The incorporation of plaid into the cotton fabric that we now know as madras, may be traditional to the Indian weavers who produced the cloth and/or a product of British imposition. [10] By the early 19th century, most madras cloth was made in tartan plaid, and it is possible that this aesthetic choice was a result of King George IV’s visit to Scotland — a diplomatic coup, which resulted in a lasting and widespread imperial resurgence of the archaic pattern. [11] However, textile scholar Jasleen Dhamija points to the 16th century records of the Portuguese, which describe checked fabrics from South India that became popular among Haj pilgrims and that originated in Masulipatnam, where they were ritual cloths for cleaning the faces of temple deities. [12]

From the 17th to the 19th century, England, the Netherlands, and France joined the commercial venture of trafficking enslaved Africans as well as the adjacent cotton trade, including madras fabric, as a valuable commodity. [13] Through the British and Dutch East India Companies, as well as the Compagnie des Indes (all of which were founded to monopolize the worldwide trade of Indian goods), madras was shipped to the so-called “New World,” aboard slaving ships to the West Indies. [14] [15] In an effort to eliminate competition between the extremely-popular madras cloth and local textiles, France and England outlawed the wholesale of the textile, only allowing it to be sold in their Caribbean colonies. [16] As an alternative to selling the fabric locally, the English and the French found a market selling the cloth to slave traders. [17] The traders used the cloth as collateral to bargain for enslaved West Africans, at one point making the fabric’s value equal to or greater than the life and freedom of a human person. [18] Indian cotton textiles comprised at least 30 percent of the total export value of Anglo-African trade. [19]

Following the maritime routes of the slave trade, and the ensuing displacement of enslaved Africans throughout the growing diaspora, the cloth developed new resonances with the Black population of both the French and British West Indies. Madras was incorporated into lives of Black West Indians through a melange of both African cultural remittances, such as creolization, where Indian madras fabric was used to fashion dress styles comprised of both West African and European components. Madras soon became a staple for both free and enslaved Black people. This was especially true for Black women, who, at different times, used brightly-colored Madras headdresses to subvert the sumptuary laws of the Caribbean and New Orleans (sometimes colloquially known as the northernmost city of the Caribbean), which mandated plainness as a sign of inferiority and subaltern subjectivity. [20]

In the United States, madras has found an enduring position within the lexicon of American sportswear and, in particular, preppy culture, once known as “Ivy Style.” The fabric has become so synonymous with this subculture, it even appears as a decorative and thematic motif on the cover and throughout The Official Preppy Handbook, a satirical and codifying best-seller of 1980. In chapter 4, “Dressing the Part: The Basic Look,” with typeface over a madras-covered page, the intro to the chapter reads, “MADRAS…If there is one fabric that is quintessentially Preppy, it is madras. True madras, of course. The real thing is one of the oldest fabrics in the cotton trade, a fine hand-loomed cotton that is imported from Madras, India.” [21] It then goes on to a list of detailed instructions for caring for the fabric. The notion of authenticity, evoked here by the qualifiers “quintessentially Preppy,” and “true madras,” are layered in a turducken-like configuration of cultural appropriations and hegemony. 

Among the first recordings of madras in the United States, is a 1718 donation of five bolts of the fabric to the Collegiate School of New Haven, Connecticut. [22] The donor, whose name the school now bears, pledged a very large amount of money and goods to the then-desperate institution, in addition to the valuable fabric. [23] His name was Elihu Yale, and he was the then-governor of Madras. [24] Known even in his own time as corrupt and cruel, Yale was famous for his greed, which amounted to perpetrating financial scams, and with his common practice of illegally abducting and enslaving local children, even flouting the legal limits of the British slave trade so heinously that he had to be sanctioned by the British Government. [25] He famously enforced a rule by which every ship leaving to Europe had to possess at least ten enslaved people. [26] It is ironic then that madras would eventually become a staple of “Ivy League” style centuries later.

Early proof of the widespread sale of madras in the United States includes an 1897 Sears Roebuck catalog, which lists madras shirts for sale, and a 1919 New York Times article that reported a shortage of madras shirts in the country. [27] However, it was not until the mid 1930s that the fad for madras, which peaked in the 1950s and ‘60s, really began to take shape. [28] The close association between madras and Ivy Style in the United States was largely popularized by tourism and Ivy League rugby tournaments in the Caribbean. [29]

Upon their return to the United States, the mostly upper-class white students brought madras with them, an appropriation of local Caribbean sartorial norms, which was indexical to their conspicuous consumption, hegemony, access to leisure and travel, and WASP-y Anglophilia. [30] Madras became associated with Ivy League schools, vacation, the Caribbean, and eventually domestic locales such as Long Island (the Hamptons), Rhode Island (Newport), and South Florida (Palm Beach and Fisher Island). [31] The fabric was fashioned into everything from shirts, trousers, shorts, and blazers, to watchbands, ties, and other accessories.

Although the craze for madras in the United States has depleted significantly since the end of the 1960s, madras clothing is still widely available at preppy sportswear retailers like Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Brooks Brothers, and J. Press (founded on Yale University’s campus in 1902). Madras, like many other American sportswear staples, has a complex global history that often includes exploitation, violence, and many layers of cultural appropriation. The adoption of madras into the canon of American sartorial expression has meant that, like many other pieces of American culture, it has been whitewashed. The result is not just discursive erasure, but a tangible reification of the racial wealth gap.