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Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Shefalee Vasudev

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123 pages

English

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Ever been intrigued by the Indian Fashion Industry-its stereotypes of drugged models, gay designers, and fascinating but unaffordable clothes?Join Shefalee Vasudev, former editor of Marie Claire and an acclaimed fashion journalist, on a deepsea dive into the gagging depths of Indian fashion. In Powder Room, she offers an insider's view of people who make the industry what it is-from a lower middle class girl who sells global luxury for a living to a designer who fights the inner demons of child sexual abuse yet manages to survive and thrive in the business of fashion, or a Ludhiana housewife on a perpetual fashion high. Besides candid interviews of known names in Indian fashion, Shefalee provides a commentary on new social behaviour, urban culture, generational differences, and the compulsions behind conspicuous consumption in a country splitting at the seams with inequalities of opportunity and wealth. From Nagaland to Patan, Mumbai, Delhi, and Punjab, Powder Room mirrors how and why India 'does' fashion.

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Employabilité, métiers et formations

India

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	26 juillet 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184002973
Langue	English

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SHEFALEE VASUDEV
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2012
Copyright Shefalee Vasudev 2012
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B, A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301 (UP)
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184002973
For my parents Indra and Harish Vaswani, whose genes I wear to work
Contents
Introduction
1. Dry Clean Only
2. Price on Request
3. The Ludhiana Ladies
4. Walk, Don t Talk
5. Boy, Interrupted
6. The Raja and the Yuvraj
7. Ladies Tailor
8. In the Red
9. Peanuts as Salary, Free Trips to Paris
10. In the Wings
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Author
Introduction
W hen I quit my job in January 2010 as editor of Marie Claire , I didn t suspect that I was on my way to becoming its apologist. I had found the editorial climate of fashion magazines handcuffed by Bollywood and advertisers, from where fashion appeared to be a hostage to celebrities and the upper class. It seemed a very narrow matrix compared to the way the idea of clothing varies in India-from the barely clothed who spend their entire lives in hand-me-down rags to those who spend millions of rupees on wedding garments. Between the two classes lies the thriving middle class for whom fashion is no longer a spectator sport. It, too, has begun to assess its worth through clothes, even as the rich look almost exhausted in their search for competitive ways of spending. There is a rising inequality between the middle class and the rich in education, employment, and entertainment in new India. Curiously, there is rising inequality in fashion affordability between these two classes. Further down, the lower middle class is just a disillusioned, sometimes resentful viewer of this unequal game. Featuring a luxury watch worth a million rupees alongside a lehnga, embroidered by a craftsperson who could not afford to send his children to school, would rattle my world view. I looked for conflict resolution. As a popular culture writer, I observed that divorce and fashion were two defining factors in the last decade. If 2000-2010 was the divorce decade, it was also India s dress-up decade.
Till I was in Class 12, I hadn t heard of Coco Chanel. Born and brought up in a middle class, liberal Sindhi family in the small town of Gandhidham in Kutch, I was raised simply. My parents, both teachers and Sindhi writers, had participated in India s freedom movement when they were young and carried the scars of Partition. In the India that remained, they wanted me to join the administrative service. Guided by Gandhian beliefs, my mother shunned expensive silks, precious jewellery, make up, perfumes, and everything artificial (her favourite word for fashion). Even now, she doesn t know who or what Louis Vuitton is and what I mean when I rave about couture. Yet, she would indulge my childhood craze for new frocks and stitched them herself on an Usha sewing machine. I would cut out patterns from Eve s Weekly and Femina , choose the fabrics, and hover around while she sewed. No excess was permitted. Formal clothes were kept aside for weddings or festivals only. Old clothes became nightwear and a careful differentiation had to be made between home wear and outside wear. My parents would wear old clothes while travelling in trains (we always travelled Second Class) as clothes got spoilt in the train . The recycling would never end, and after clothes were too worn out, the cotton ones would be cut and hemmed to make dusters. Yes, once in a while, my father who travelled often would pamper me with heel-wale sandals from Bombay. Even so, fashion was considered inferior to academic excellence and showing-off of any kind was plain bad manners. As an adolescent, I was scolded every time I asked if I could thread my eyebrows.
Later in life when my peers in fashion would tell me that their mothers had always used Chanel No. 5 or that they had grown up in a world of Est e Lauder powder and French chiffons, I would keep quiet. I still recycle my worn out clothes to wear at home and till this day haven t bought clothes or accessories from a single luxury label. Spending recklessly on clothes still makes me feel guilty.
So what am I doing writing about fashion? To be honest, curiosity drove me to research this book. I looked for threads that could stitch up the story of fashion in India through people who lived for and by it-from designers to weavers. What were the private lives and frustrations of designers like? What did their families think about them? Does fashion really help distract people from everyday problems?
The narrative of clothing and fashion in modern India seems to be a close indicator of new social behaviour, rifts inside families, generational differences, and the compulsions behind fanciful consumption. If the financial independence of Indian women has led to a large societal change and their sexual liberation, fashion has certainly added to tangible liberties. It appears to be India s biggest fantasy at the moment-the great new escape. Bollywood is its face, and the Indian wedding its alter ego. Its relevance and use as an end-goal in life may be a debate, but it drives a lot of what we see around us as urban culture. Also, there seemed to be a serious clash in the way media represents the fashion industry and what it actually is. We lampoon its malfunctions, allowing fantastical assumptions to gloss over the fact that clothes that reach mass brand retail stores or fashion collections we see at fashion weeks, take months to create. They are the culmination of serious business strategies combined with fiery creative imagination. Not all designers have had formal training; some have created large businesses by giving a free reign to their imagination. Anamika Khanna, one of the country s most critically applauded designers, never went to a fashion college, nor did the younger Anupama Dayal who managed to double her turnover between 2010 and 2011. Behind designer clothes are armies of people: designers, karigars who sew crystals on saris for eighteen hours a day, tailors, and stylists.
Paradoxes leapt out of every subject I explored. Not only is India now a powerful retail destination for luxury and mass brands, but Manish Arora, the former creative director of French brand Paco Rabanne is one of the most popular designers at Paris Fashion Week. His design leadership has planted the words Indian Fashion firmly onto the world stage. As have numerous showings, appearances on the Cannes red carpet and retail tie ups of other designers, some younger ones included. Our designers not only sell to bling-obsessed NRIs but also dress global celebrities.
Indian fashion sells in the Middle East countries as much as it does here. The world s terms of engagement with India as a manufacturing hub of fashion are still more or less the same-a sourcing centre for beautiful embellishments, embroideries, and affordable tailoring. At the same time, India s manufacture influence has inflated. Local designers and collectives now create entire pr t collections for brands like Kenzo, Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger. In an opposite pursuit, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, one of the highest selling Indian designers has a vision of starting a clothing company that will make affordable garments for the middle class. Suneet Varma, an industry veteran, emphasizes the diversification of his expertise into design consultancies as one of the survival strategies in a market challenged by global brands.
The words fashion and designer are now conversational staples. They are bandied about in popular lexicon like a cloud burst, splashing every nuance. Stories of men and women I met in different towns strengthened the suspicion that outside magazines, fashion was hardly about the rich and the under-occupied. The black Sadri worn by BJP veteran Sushma Swaraj as her clothing statement; Mayawati s faux leather handbags; and the dramatic increase in the sales of black and coloured lingerie (as opposed to the stiff, white Libertina bras of our growing up years) in tier two cities; or Rajesh Pratap Singh, the Master of Minimalism in India fashion, designing the uniforms for the staff of Indigo Airlines-all provide insights into the way we have evolved.
While writing the book, I met and interviewed more than 300 people, from Nagaland to Ludhiana, designers to sponsors and directors of fashion weeks, and even those who have never opened a fashion magazine in their lives. The youngest weaver in the Salvi family that weaves the rare and now dying Patan Patola sari in Patan, Gujarat, told me he had quit a full time job as an architect to become a full time weaver and set up a private Patan Patola museum recording its history since the eleventh century. A gay stylist explained how fashion had helped him come out of the closet. A ladies tailor told me that she dreamt of her masterji (cutter) and not her husband even when she was going through a messy divorce. In a memorable interview, an East Delhi girl told me how her priorities changed after she began working as a sales executive for a luxury brand at Delhi s Emporio Mall.
Equally compelling are the personal stories of designers who rebelled against their families to pursue their calling--regarded as not a lot better than a darzi s . Young designer Rahul Mishra, a formidable talent, also a poster boy of responsib