Fashion, my foot

Her skin shone in the bikini she wore, a bright yellow. From the car window her cellophane wrapped body appeared like it was covered with a tantalising sheer garment. She was dark. Very dark. But that is not how you refer to people on the cover of Vogue, even the Indian edition. You say she is dusky. You find new words that convey sex appeal, lusciousness.

I waved my hand to denote that I was not interested. A pair of dark eyes looked at me and pointed fingers at the model. “Madam, le lo, phashun hai.”

Shaking my head, I looked at the girl selling these copies. Her hair was tied carelessly on the top of her head, her eyes were beseeching and she was dark. No one would find words like dusky for her skin, or dark and inviting for her eyes. She was too young for a bikini, but her clothes were torn at the shoulder.

We held each other’s gaze for a long time.

I often wonder about the chasms that exist. What makes one superior to the other? Is it us? Would I have waved my hand had the model stood in front of me trying to market some two-piece at a fashion show?

- - -

Taking of fashion shows, I am just so glad that this ridiculous one currently going on, the Lakme Fashion Week, is finally over. You might wonder why it ought to bother me at all. Because I open the pages of our national newspapers and it is all there. In nauseating detail. Even when an attempt is made to expose how foreign buyers don’t give a shit, it looks ridiculous. For, I watch those so-called authorities on fashion, with their pumped up white porcine faces and their own silly clothes and wonder how they can sit and judge and say things like we need to focus.

We need to shut shop. This fashion parody has been going on for too long and makes no sense. I believe there was one show where all the male models were dressed as Sikhs because it was a sporting line and Sikhs are sporty! What next, a cocktail line should have Malayalis because they drink like crazy, and a lounge line ought to have Bengalis for they are always lounging?

There is this Bong designer, Sabyasachi Mukherjee. I remember his early days when he would smile and do ordinary things with clothes which made them wearable. Now he talks about using leather and jute and all that crap and he invariably gets the models to look deglamourised in a trendy way – they mostly wear large glasses and bindis with any kind of outfit. It just looks terribly stagey and hardly dramatic.

What is the point being made here? That you can be a plain Jane and carry it off? Who the hell is some designer to convey that? These clothes are pricey and lack basic aesthetics. Talking about silhouettes is not going to change the fact that wearing long tunics over short capris will always make you look like you are a behenji who has rolled up her churidar for a little dip in the beach waters because your shauhar said, “Chalo ji, kuchch paaon tau geele kar lo!”

I am really tired of this….then they go on about cuts and lines. We are Indians; we have curves. Real curves. And we like it. As women. We don’t give a damn what some men, and to hell with designers being gay, want. If you care so much for the flat look then just dress your male models as women, like you made them dress like Sikhs. Not too tough. The androgynous look is what you want, and what you will get.

Some of us look like women even when we wear men's kurtas, like I often do. Latest acquisition is one in lime-green, teamed up with brown slacks and a beaded necklace with a bronze pendant that has an elephant motif.

No need for the trumpets, too…