You know how it is when you are engrossed in a meaningful conversation with somebody and suddenly the eyes glaze over and swivel away ever so slightly, the voice tapering off. Here we are at the choicest of shows at an art gallery near Bond Street in London, the kind where flutes of champagne float by without pause and all those lithe figures in black, male and female, spill out, chattering, onto the street. Well, the silver-haired academic with serious credentials and sartorial flair (impeccable in white linen) and that oh-so-earnest propah accent the BBC dumped aeons ago (more Bertie Wooster than say Orlando Bloom) turns away mid-sentence babbling something about high modernism.

Following his patrician gaze I see a vision sheathed in black with endless legs swishing by on stilettos, so pointed, Sharon Stone could have used them in Basic Instinct instead of something as utilitarian as an ice pick. Naturally, she is blonde – that American kind of blonde that signals good health, daily shampoos and tons of Caesar’s salad without the croutons and dressing – naked leaves that is. The lady in black, like the other two swanning around the gallery that evening, is a gallerywali – a female receptionist or associate, not the boss mind you, and not anybody particularly knowledgeable about the canons of art.

A touch of class
‘Gallerina’ is the delicious new word for these waif-like creatures you can spot in Chelsea and other hotspot art districts in Manhattan and, increasingly, in London. Why ‘gallerina’? Well, these gallery ladies, many of them elegantly tall, tend to be delicate looking, like ballerinas. Their role goes beyond adding a touch of class to the cut-throat and jumpy world of the art mart. In their black Prada dresses (genuine and fake) and air of aloofness (genuine or fake) gallerinas also bolster the exclusivity and clubby factor of upmarket galleries. They incarnate the Us and Them factor: for instance if you are scruffy – or worse dowdy – without any discreet signs of being seriously rich (there are unwritten codes that only the Us people know about) the gallerina’s icy glare can freeze you in your tracks. She can do the same if you ask for a price list as soon as you enter: in other words if you have to ask you shouldn’t be here, that kind of thing.

I recently came across the word gallerina in Danielle Ganek’s intelligently tart debut novel Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, published this summer. It’s an insider’s tongue-in-cheek take on the rarified and curious world of the contemporary art scene – insider because Ganek and her husband are serious Manhattan art collectors. No wonder we get to see the warts beneath the glamorous and seductive facades. What the novel The Devil Wears Prada did for, on second thought make that to, the fashion world, Lulu Meets God… is doing to the contemporary art scene. In both worlds, largely fuelled by San Pellegrino sparkling water, appearance is all. You are to a large extent what you wear – the clothes as much as the attitude.

Debatable cleavage
‘Clothes make the man,’ Mark Twain once famously said. I don’t know why he left women out of it, however, the line that followed, is equally interesting: ‘Naked people have little or no influence on society’. I suppose he meant that clothes bestowed individual marks of distinction or power on bare bodies – and of course the lack of them as well. Tribes managed to impart hierarchy without clothes by all those markings on the body. In the modern world an increasing number of people may be using the tattoos on their bodies (they are getting more and more intricate) to signal their individuality or persona.

But for the rest of humanity, especially public personalities, what you wear and how you wear it are of critical importance. Take poor Senator Hillary Clinton the other day on the Senate floor talking about the heavy cost of higher education. What she said has been drowned out by the roar of debate over the soupçon of cleavage showing above her black top with a lower-than-usual neckline, a top that was almost covered by a pink jacket. Washington Post’s Robin Givhan constructed an entire article about the cleavage and what it signified and the American press and bloggers went to town over it, mostly deriding the journalist for making too much ado over a little bit of cleavage.

To show or not to show is not the question for Givhan: it is the way you show it. ‘To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d’oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever’.

Ergo: Clinton should have been more brazen about it. Givhan would rather have the former first lady be more like the new British home secretary, Jacqui Smith, who spoke before the House of Commons with far more cleavage showing. ‘If Clinton’s was a teasing display, then Smith’s was a full-fledged come-on. But somehow it wasn’t as unnerving. Perhaps that’s because Smith’s cleavage seemed to be presented so forthrightly’.

Imagine if our national press were to study sari blouse necklines and faltering pallavs or the thinness of the khadi dhotis and pyjamas of our parliamentarians – or even discourse about receding hairlines – to read their style statements and attitudes.

Thank God we don’t. But thank God that ever since parliament proceedings started being televised and MPs started spending almost as much time in TV studios as they do in Parliament our politicos are dressing much better.

Aamchi India
If I may get back to the gallerinas. They may not yet be embellishing the contemporary art scene in aamchi India but the fashionistas have made the art world their stomping ground — an extension of the ramp at times. Perhaps, we can have a more creative interaction between the worlds of art and fashion. The riveting exhibition Surreal Things (just concluded) at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London looked at the influence of surrealism on design. The collaboration between fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvadore Dali resulted in some stunning confections. These include a ‘Tear’ dress that looks as if it has been repeatedly torn and the notorious lobster dress worn by the Duchess of Windsor in which a huge lobster is strategically placed in the front of the organdy dress.

Now, what if Subodh Gupta got together with Manish Arora to produce an ensemble? You could either have steel cows stitched on organdy gowns in kitschy colours or even a miniature ambassador car replica worn as a hat.