Designer exploiters

Getting disgusted won’t get me anywhere, but once again something at a fashion show has put me off. Look, why don’t these people stick to their sticks walking the ramp and stop messing around with social issues? The last time I got upset was when they had exploited toilet cleaners; now they are using blind women.

One of them embossed Braille on the front of one garment and the English alphabets at the back. She said, “It is the blind that feel and ‘see’. The ones that have vision are really blind. The blind don’t want compassion, they want respect.”

Is this respect? The bloody gall of designing clothes with Braille. Do they think that the visually impaired are stupid? Do they imagine that they are going to run their hands over their clothes to read about fabric and silhouette and such other details…or is it detailing? And as this picture shows, the blind women are not even wearing the so-called designer clothes; they were brought in as gimmicks.

If you want to help the blind then, even though it sounds insensitive, make your models walk blindfolded. Watch them trip (and please do not try a wardrobe malfunction trick to capitalise on boobless boobs) and then play some violin music to convey tragedy, darken the auditorium and flash the social message - the blind cannot see, but ‘see’.

Damn. They might even take this suggestion seriously.

Another cuckoo case this ‘season’ dealt with the issue of fascism. And how did he convey it? By using Nazi skinheads! As though we don’t have home-grown fascists. Here, too, we cannot get rid of our foreign obsession.

Some are now trying the no-makeup look with models dressed in sack cloth walking barefoot. Honey, if you are so desperate at least make sure the ‘super model’ has nice feet. Stop kidding around. Fashion is about clothes, beauty, upfront physical appeal. Leave the issues for another time.

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This is an extract from an earlier post…Fashion, my foot:

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.