The Stiff Collar, the Mumbai-based online shirt company now sells a line of shirt that has been designed keeping in mind Indian men’s natural proclivity towards acquiring a paunch even in their young age. They call it the Paunch Shirt. “While working on Stiff Collar we realised that the Indian shirt was designed for the western body,” says S Ganesh, the CEO of the company, “The Indian body typically has a smaller neck but a few inches more on the waist. As a brand we also believed in telling things the way they are and so chose to forgo euphemisms like relaxed fit for the more direct paunch fit.”

The shirt which the company claims has  become a big seller, has a few extra inches around the waist and is longer than the normal shirt to accommodate the fact that men with paunches “ have their shirts lose their tuck-in by the end of the day.”  Though most Indian men would secretly covet a shirt like this, aren’t they put off by the directness of the name? “Actually Indian men, especially those with a few grey hairs, are quite secure with their paunches and have quite a sense of humour about it,” says Ganesh.