The salwar kameez is the standard dress of Punjabi women and is worn by men in some parts of west Punjab and the frontier. It is a tunic over loose trousers gathered at the ankle, with a dupatta.
The Punjabi version has a particular cut: the salwar full and pleated at the waist, gathered into a narrow ankle band. The Patiala salwar, with very deep pleats and a great deal of cloth, is a distinct regional style named for the state.
It spread across northern India in the twentieth century from Punjab and is now worn far beyond it, which is one of very few Punjabi cultural exports that travelled without anyone noticing where it came from.
The phulkari dupatta, embroidered on khaddar, was the formal accompaniment and is now largely ceremonial.
Men's Punjabi dress is the kurta and pyjama, the tehmat or chadra wrapped at the waist in rural use, the turban, and the jutti.
The dress is not old in this form. What Punjabi women wore before the twentieth century varied by region and community and the ghagra was common in the Malwa and in the east. The salwar kameez became universal over roughly two generations, and the change is inside the memory of the generation before this one.
Cloth is the gift. A suit length given at a wedding, at a birth, to a daughter going to her husband's house, is the standard unit of exchange in a Punjabi family and a trousseau was counted in them. The word still means the unstitched set as much as the finished garment.
The dupatta is the part that carries the meaning. How it is worn, over the head or on the shoulder or not at all, is read immediately by everybody who sees it.