Onakkodi Season in Kochi: The Onam Shopping Guide for 2026

There is a particular kind of happiness in a Kerala household when the Onam clothes come home. The custom has a name, Onakkodi, the new set of clothes bought or gifted for the festival, and for many families it is as fixed a ritual as the sadya or the pookkalam. This year Thiruvonam lands on Wednesday, August 26, with the ten-day festival opening on Atham on August 16, and the Kochi shopping season is already warming up.

If the pookkalam is Onam's colour, Onakkodi is its texture. And the fabric that says Onam more than any other is the kasavu, the off-white Kerala cotton edged with a fine gold border. If you want to sort out the season's flowers first, our Onam flower guide is the companion to this one.

The kasavu, and why it still rules Onam

Kasavu is not really a single garment so much as a look: cream cloth, a band of gold, worn as a saree or as the two-piece set mundu. The weave has deep roots in Kerala's handloom towns, with Balaramapuram near Thiruvananthapuram and Kuthampully in Thrissur among the best known, where families have worked the looms for generations. A genuine handloom kasavu has a weight and a border you can feel, quite different from the printed, power-loom versions that flood the market every August. It is worth knowing the difference before you pay for one.

You do not have to travel to the weaving villages to buy well. Government-run handloom outlets and Khadi Gramodyog Bhavans across the city stock authentic pieces, and many of the smaller independent shops we point to in our handmade and local brands guide carry handloom saris and set mundus made by Kerala weavers.

The Khadi Melas have opened

The clearest sign that the season is on: Kerala's Onam Khadi Melas opened on July 23. These state-backed fairs, run with recognised khadi institutions, are a fixture of the run-up to Onam, and they matter for a practical reason beyond tradition. Khadi, the hand-spun and hand-woven cotton, usually carries the government's Onam rebate during this window, which makes a khadi kurta or saree one of the more sensible buys of the season. If you have never worn khadi in Kerala's sticky August, this is the month to try it; it breathes in a way synthetics simply do not.

Onakkodi is also a gift as much as a purchase. The older custom is that elders buy the new clothes for the younger members of the family, and married daughters are sent something for the festival by their parents, so a single Onam shop often means picking for half a dozen people at once. If you are choosing for someone else, cream and gold never goes wrong, but the modern Onam wardrobe has loosened up: soft pastels, temple-border cottons and simple handloom kurtas all read as festive now without the full traditional set.

Shopping smart before Thiruvonam

A few things worth remembering. Onam overlaps the tail of the monsoon, so the city is a little quieter and a little wetter than the December tourist peak, which means less jostling in the shops if you go on a weekday morning. The big malls run their own Onam offers, which we round up in our weekend deals roundup, but the more characterful buys tend to come from the handloom cooperatives and small textile houses rather than the chains.

Go early in the ten days rather than on Uthradam eve, when the good handloom stock thins out and the queues lengthen. Buy for the whole family in one trip if you can, since Onakkodi traditionally means everyone, elders and children included, gets something new. And if you are hunting for a specific weaver, tailor or textile shop in the city, our Kochi business directory is a good place to start.

However you dress for it, the point of Onakkodi is not the label. It is the small, shared ceremony of the whole house turning out in something fresh on Thiruvonam morning, flowers at the door, sadya on the leaf, and the year's most generous festival finally here.