Fashion does extraordinary things to ordinary people. The illusion of beauty, the delusion of fame, the subtleties of taste and the vulgarities of excess. Talk about any fashion show today, and the sum total could turn up as burlesque, a grand parody, where we are both actors and audience at the same time.

Coming For My Show?

Fashion shows have become adrenaline touchstones in our calendar of make-believe. With a Dior in hand and the early summer flush of India Shining, while to some, it maybe just a social indulgence, to others, the arena of fashion is nothing less than a grand canvas on which you create magic, weave dreams, fly or fall. The mayhem of fashion shows, the media outcry, the society gal camaraderie, the silent scrutiny, our ultimate and utter need for beauty..,what can I say? It's style chauvinism all the way, right here where the spinning wheel was first immortalised as a symbol of change. For all those who pooh-pooh fashion, it may be wise to remember what Mussolini said to the Nazis in 1933: "Any power whatsoever is destined to fail before fashion. If fashion says skirts are to be short, you will not succeed in lengthening them, even with the guillotine." So there. Next time, someone turns up his nose when I introduce myself as a fashion writer, pay heed. I am pretty much loaded with my fashion ammunition.

Of Soho-Bohemia…

To partake in the shenanigans of fashion that entice, ensnare and sometimes ceremoniously eject us from time to time, taken in the right spirit, is a lot of fun! During Lakme India Fashion Week, year after year, I am amazed at the transition we make from our urban bumper-to-bumper existence in this city, to living in a ‘Oh-so-like Soho’ lull. This is the time everyone is apparently doing something spectacularly different. To be constantly pulled over to be told, “Just moved back from LA;” “Just moved back to Berlin;” “Just turned to Conceptual Art;” “Just gave up Ashtanga Yoga;” “Love the Met;” “Hate Moma (too official);” “Just started a restaurant;” “Just started gallery-restaurant;” “Is that a Stella?” “I sell jewellery made from papier mache”; “I make Sikkimese masks with Swarovski gems”; “I raise ducks”; “I’m a crossover actor”; “I am a cross dresser”. What a wonderful air of Bohemia! It’s delicious talk almost tempting me, an otherwise covert writer, to say something as randy as, “And me? I’m finally being paid for my writing!” This fascinating repartee of Bohemian one-upmanship, while creating immense energy, is in its roots, only our need to be seen as utterly different from one another. Cecil Beaton, photographer extraordinaire, once said, “Fashion exists to satisfy that most difficult of causes, to make of oneself a work of art. It is the mass unconscious desire to shake off the ordinary. The means not only to find an identity but to escape one too.” Funny, role-playing is such a fine preoccupation in theatre and film. But in fashion, it’s apparently a bad word! I say, every girl should have a Cecil to nudge her to the next fashion show.  

...And Front Row Mania!

Given the pandemonium about The Front Row power mongering that takes place show after show, it is quite evident that we do fancy the image of ourselves, seated on Row A, clicking our heels with the nonchalant innocence of a Victorian coquette. However, at closer scrutiny it’s a dead giveaway of our honeyed need to assert power. And it seems well justified given that the front row assignees are probably the ones who have the moolah, buy the goodies, and are perhaps, social dilettantes who can set trends. In other words, they not only talk the talk but also walk the walk. While art can have patrons that raked in millions from the time of the great Medicis, it is nothing less than intellectual pomposity that stops us from calling bejewelled front row ladies, ‘patrons of some fancy designer’. And what a conspirator the designer is! The Front Row mania is his marketing master stroke. It is no other than the designer himself who understands with the precision of a surgeon, who will impart his vision off the ramp. After all, when was fashion about mass acceptability? In essence, it remains a phenomenon that trickles down to people from the echelon of style. For the love of money, even prêt-à-porter isn’t as much en masse as it is portrayed, because the premise of fashion, said William Hazlitt, with great humour, “is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken”. Perhaps the reason why, the genius designer, Cristobel Balenciaga, once said, “We must dress only thoroughbreds!” 

To Dress Or To Undress?

All this hullabaloo about mere clothes, you may ask. But throw in the magic potion of sex and desire into it and you may have a weighty subject for your cocktail banter. Imagine even in a repressive era of corsets, where clothes worked like padlocks and chastity belts were quite the fad, it was all about sex. The husband or the chambermaid would lace up the lady, as it was impossible for her to do up the corset herself. The husband would watch very carefully how his lady was ‘tied’ up. When she came home and the husband saw any change in the way she was laced up, it was a sure telltale sign that his lady had a lover!  So, from a flimsy dress to a body-trapping crinoline, the summation of fashion is, in its great paradox, like a veil – it seeks to reveal as it conceals, it takes from one hand what it gives from another. Maybe Lin Yutang, philosopher and humourist, chanced on an answer when he said, “All women’s dresses are merely variations of the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the un-admitted desire to undress.”

Enjoy your next show!