Kanimozhi (left) at the conference in Cuddalore on Saturday. (PTI)

Chennai, June 14: For once, it wasn’t dhotis that were fluttering in the breeze but a sea of red salwars and black kameezes.

Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK today shed its kara-veshti (dhoti) image of a male-dominated outfit as the party’s first women’s conference got off to a rousing start in tsunami-hit Cuddalore.

Chief minister M. Karunanidhi and senior leaders like K. Anbazhagan watched from a vantage point, but it was the women — in specially stitched red-and-black salwar-kameez, and some in black-and-red-bordered saris — who stole the show. Especially one woman: the DMK boss’s poetess daughter Kanimozhi.

The Rajya Sabha MP, hailed as the party’s next-generation woman leader, wore a silver-grey silk sari, its black border embedded with red dots to symbolise the party’s colours.

The conference was also a launch pad for her — at a venue that 26 years ago saw the political baptism of the party’s arch-rival, ADMK chief Jayalalithaa.

The two-day meet, kicked off formally by women’s wing secretary Sankari Narayanan, began with the party flag being unfurled by senior leader Vasanthi Ganesan on an 85-foot-high pole to signify the DMK patriarch’s 85th year.

Kanimozhi said the main objective of the meet was to press the Centre to speed up legislation that would set aside 33 per cent seats for women in Parliament and state legislatures and to review the “path we have traversed in our empowerment so far”.

She also unveiled a portrait of the late Dravidian leader, E.V. Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar, who fought a relentless battle for equal status for women.

Karunanidhi came with his two wives, Dayalu Ammal and Rajathi Ammal. Also present were his eldest son M.K. Azhagiri, his daughter Kayalvizhi, who is aspiring to a political role, and poetess Tamizhachi Thangapandian.

The DMK chief’s other son, M.K. Stalin, now in London with wife Durga, is expected tomorrow.