The Armchair Critic
I’ll Tell You What to Wear
Fashion magazines of a certain genre - I love! Paradoxically, I love to hate them too! They are unrealistic and impractical but I love them for the entertainment they provide --- entertainment and perhaps a vicarious thrill from a peek into an unreal world. They also give you the satisfaction of hating them…. It makes you feel kind of superior when you think you are above what they show case and preach. Yes! They‟re preachy! Awfully so! And they often have a bullying tone. „Have you got….‟? „Are you wearing….‟? „Why haven‟t you got…..?‟ Being fashion magazines the accent is on clothes but the clothing is sooo weird it's unwearable.
The few clothes that are wearable are meant for women of a certain age and size. You need to be a very wealthy teenager or woman in her twenties, one who is mindful of diet, figure, skin and hair. Or to stretch a point a well kept thirty something. Some of the write-ups clearly state that the clothes are meant for women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four. They have a precise cut-off point, thirty-four! Not thirty-five, because then you are over the hill with your face and shape! Another article in the same magazine will spew some rubbish like, sixty is the new forty! Why do fashion magazines cater to women who are no more than fortyish? Maybe I should start a periodical for more senior fashion. Not a bad idea huh? Anyway, the fraction of the clothes that are wearable, are quite unaffordable to a majority of women, even those with their own income. An occasional skirt that I may like or yes, even love, will cost six figures in Indian rupees! I kid you not! A gorgeous jumper may cost half a lakh! I used to think of my family as being quite comfortably off, but seeing these prices makes me feel poor! Then I have to shake myself, and sternly say, ‟Look around you! That‟s poverty and squalor!‟
The bags they showcase are sooo yummy. However the prices make me want to weep. At best I can stretch to a Lavie or Hidesign. No Ferragamos and Fendis for me. Louis Vuitton has been done to death though! I wouldn‟t be seen dead with an LV. (Who am I kidding? Sniff!) Never mind, a neighbourhood store sells fakes so real, you couldn‟t tell the difference! At least my inexpert eye cannot! Accessories! Magazines exhort you to accessorize, accessorize, and accessorize, with spikey hairbands costing a few thousand just because they‟re designer hairbands, weird necklaces, „statement earrings‟, coloured gemstones that cost the earth and have no intrinsic value, you only pay for the ... you guessed it DESIGN! Watches cost seven figure numbers, and you must have a „statement‟ watch for the day and another for the night. The lighting is different, duh!
You must have your little black dress, which if you dare to put on weight, is rendered useless! A month later they will tell you that you little black dresses are boring, and you should have a little red number, or a little white dress!
Though a lot of Indians have enormous amounts of money to spend on bags and shoes and heavily priced clothing, these indulgences are wallowed in largely at weddings or special occasions and most working class women really do not have the wherewithal for a Gucci bag for work or Ferragamo shoes for daily wear! A majority of the urban middle-class does not have the capacity to dip into their savings for designer labels. Consequently, such brands remain the monopoly of the very wealthy, a lot of whom are seen in major metros and some second tier cities. Often the most premium brands belong to likes of film stars, supermodels, wives of businessmen and women in top management – the ones with oodles of spare cash!
Mention of these types brings me to the point that fashion magazines often showcase women who are super successes, who have invariably excelled in business, markets, fashion or media or who may be running an NGO on papa's money, how noble! Moreover why is it not surprising that these women are youngish, slim, svelte and dressed in designer garb from their heads down to their pedicured tootsies? If you look below the surface you may just find that they are wives, sisters, daughters of families that are already well entrenched in business and consequently they have been given a leg up to get into the driving seat. Very often their designer togs have been lent to them by the magazine that is doing the feature. Does not an ordinary middle-class housewife dressed in ordinary middle class clothes merit a feature to herself? Has she not worked to the bone, scrimped and saved for the household, commuted long hours to bring in those few extra thousand every month? Why can't a journalist walk into a random household and outline a dedicated homemaker? One who is unglamorous, ugly, isn't she a success? Have the editors or writers of these pretentious magazines ever thought of the substance she and a million others are made of? But who wants to showcase scruffy females, right? Magazines need to sell.
Neither do these magazines focus on local ordinary fashion, either Indian or western. Ads and write-ups on these are relegated to second tier magazines --- mind you I only call them second tier for want of better nomenclature. You will never find a feature or advertorial on the local department store in an international rag. Indian designers of course get their due in all the top ones, but these are also (a little less) weird. They make flowing Indian-esque garb, unwearable of course. You would trip while crossing the road or climbing stairs. Aaah! I forget. Those who wear this kind of clothing do not climb stairs much less cross roads. They get into a limo and travel in style from doorstep to doorstep, gathering their skirts about them for the few short steps they take till they reach a venue where their clothes cannot possibly get soiled!
I must tell you this --- a few days ago I came across a spread featuring men in pink and crimson suits and blazers over shorts! In my books, a pink suit is not aesthetically appealing on a man. Especially vapid men with vacant looks on their faces, and skinny to boot! Where have the ads featuring real men in corporate attire gone? Dark suits worn by intense older men, we just don‟t see them anymore! Where did Tom Selleck go?
Jewellery spreads leave you breathless. However even Western style jewellery shown by Indian jewellery houses is far more beautiful than vague European brands. Indians really know how to make fantastic jewellery. I certainly do enjoy looking at the jewellery pages. I drool over the diamonds, rubies and emeralds. I also adore the polki and jadau showcased. The jewellery pages are to die for, with the models looking so pretty and actually smiling, not scowling as they do in fashion spreads!
Most magazines produce at least one bridal issue every year which I have no quarrel with as brides do need help with their clothes, make-up and beauty prepping. The Big Fat Indian Wedding is exemplified in the importance given to the bride‟s appearance. People have told me that this is so, because everyone wants to look at the bride, who must be tall, fair and thin, dressed like a queen and bathed in gold and diamonds. Sari and lehenga designers have a field day pedalling their wares in these so very important magazines -- at horrendously exorbitant rates of course. No doubt they are breathtaking, but you get equally gorgeous lehengas, saris or whatever a bride‟s heart desires at far more affordable rates at conventional sari stores. These stores will tailor your lehenga or your choli in whatever style you wish, they are not far behind the designers! Oh, my dears you should read the bits about pre wedding relaxation spa rituals. One would imagine that a woman was getting readied for a Mughal zenana, not her wedding day! A bridal issue will tell the bride to be about beauty rituals she ought to follow from a year before the D-Day. The gym routines, the facial schedules, body massages, body wraps, are all mapped out for the beautification of the bridal flower including a body soak in mik and rose petals! Huh! What difference does that make? Choices are given by magazines, about where to go, which package to ask for, all at crazy prices. The large amounts of money the magazines exhort a bride to spend for that one evening is unbelievable. The ground reality being, of course, that most people do not have such over the top weddings, this being a trend in Northern Indian cities rather than anywhere else.
Fashion magazines now incorporate holiday destinations as well! All very fancy of course, most of them being foreign locales. Well, with our currency being what it is, what can I say, except sigh!!! Seriously, how many can afford it? How many beach weddings are there really? How many brides buy Swarovski studded bikinis? Think of the Indian woman, not the metro type, but the essential Indian woman. How relevant can these magazines be to even a fraction of them?
Such magazines are very entertaining no doubt, but at some level, I think they cause angst and want. They lead to undesirable behaviour patterns among the younger ones, who skimp on food in order to have money for clothes and makeup! This is very true, and not just for girls trying to break into show-biz. Well, most young girls, no matter what field they are in want to look skeletal. Even if they live at home they are rebellious, often skipping entire meals! But when they are from smaller towns they live alone, and eat some noodles, or soup, or an egg with bread, or vada pav from the road, and use all their money on ammunition for their auditions and screenings!
Fashion magazines thrive on gloss. Glossy paper, glossy ads and unreal worlds populated with Benz, Audi, BMW, Rolex, Omega, Cartier.......... They actually have a very small customer target base in India. Other readers read them for fun! But some like me also think about their implications.
These publications are put together by a bunch of airheads on the principle of who pays the most wins. I have read somewhere that they get gifts from big brands for themselves. If these magazines were not so enticing they would have a very small readership. They play on human nature. They instil a greed in you. So what do we do with these magazines? Enjoy them, get entertained, love them if we must, and then, throw in the trash where they belong.
Read more on www DOT crescobooks DOT com
The few clothes that are wearable are meant for women of a certain age and size. You need to be a very wealthy teenager or woman in her twenties, one who is mindful of diet, figure, skin and hair. Or to stretch a point a well kept thirty something. Some of the write-ups clearly state that the clothes are meant for women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four. They have a precise cut-off point, thirty-four! Not thirty-five, because then you are over the hill with your face and shape! Another article in the same magazine will spew some rubbish like, sixty is the new forty! Why do fashion magazines cater to women who are no more than fortyish? Maybe I should start a periodical for more senior fashion. Not a bad idea huh? Anyway, the fraction of the clothes that are wearable, are quite unaffordable to a majority of women, even those with their own income. An occasional skirt that I may like or yes, even love, will cost six figures in Indian rupees! I kid you not! A gorgeous jumper may cost half a lakh! I used to think of my family as being quite comfortably off, but seeing these prices makes me feel poor! Then I have to shake myself, and sternly say, ‟Look around you! That‟s poverty and squalor!‟
The bags they showcase are sooo yummy. However the prices make me want to weep. At best I can stretch to a Lavie or Hidesign. No Ferragamos and Fendis for me. Louis Vuitton has been done to death though! I wouldn‟t be seen dead with an LV. (Who am I kidding? Sniff!) Never mind, a neighbourhood store sells fakes so real, you couldn‟t tell the difference! At least my inexpert eye cannot! Accessories! Magazines exhort you to accessorize, accessorize, and accessorize, with spikey hairbands costing a few thousand just because they‟re designer hairbands, weird necklaces, „statement earrings‟, coloured gemstones that cost the earth and have no intrinsic value, you only pay for the ... you guessed it DESIGN! Watches cost seven figure numbers, and you must have a „statement‟ watch for the day and another for the night. The lighting is different, duh!
You must have your little black dress, which if you dare to put on weight, is rendered useless! A month later they will tell you that you little black dresses are boring, and you should have a little red number, or a little white dress!
Though a lot of Indians have enormous amounts of money to spend on bags and shoes and heavily priced clothing, these indulgences are wallowed in largely at weddings or special occasions and most working class women really do not have the wherewithal for a Gucci bag for work or Ferragamo shoes for daily wear! A majority of the urban middle-class does not have the capacity to dip into their savings for designer labels. Consequently, such brands remain the monopoly of the very wealthy, a lot of whom are seen in major metros and some second tier cities. Often the most premium brands belong to likes of film stars, supermodels, wives of businessmen and women in top management – the ones with oodles of spare cash!
Mention of these types brings me to the point that fashion magazines often showcase women who are super successes, who have invariably excelled in business, markets, fashion or media or who may be running an NGO on papa's money, how noble! Moreover why is it not surprising that these women are youngish, slim, svelte and dressed in designer garb from their heads down to their pedicured tootsies? If you look below the surface you may just find that they are wives, sisters, daughters of families that are already well entrenched in business and consequently they have been given a leg up to get into the driving seat. Very often their designer togs have been lent to them by the magazine that is doing the feature. Does not an ordinary middle-class housewife dressed in ordinary middle class clothes merit a feature to herself? Has she not worked to the bone, scrimped and saved for the household, commuted long hours to bring in those few extra thousand every month? Why can't a journalist walk into a random household and outline a dedicated homemaker? One who is unglamorous, ugly, isn't she a success? Have the editors or writers of these pretentious magazines ever thought of the substance she and a million others are made of? But who wants to showcase scruffy females, right? Magazines need to sell.
Neither do these magazines focus on local ordinary fashion, either Indian or western. Ads and write-ups on these are relegated to second tier magazines --- mind you I only call them second tier for want of better nomenclature. You will never find a feature or advertorial on the local department store in an international rag. Indian designers of course get their due in all the top ones, but these are also (a little less) weird. They make flowing Indian-esque garb, unwearable of course. You would trip while crossing the road or climbing stairs. Aaah! I forget. Those who wear this kind of clothing do not climb stairs much less cross roads. They get into a limo and travel in style from doorstep to doorstep, gathering their skirts about them for the few short steps they take till they reach a venue where their clothes cannot possibly get soiled!
I must tell you this --- a few days ago I came across a spread featuring men in pink and crimson suits and blazers over shorts! In my books, a pink suit is not aesthetically appealing on a man. Especially vapid men with vacant looks on their faces, and skinny to boot! Where have the ads featuring real men in corporate attire gone? Dark suits worn by intense older men, we just don‟t see them anymore! Where did Tom Selleck go?
Jewellery spreads leave you breathless. However even Western style jewellery shown by Indian jewellery houses is far more beautiful than vague European brands. Indians really know how to make fantastic jewellery. I certainly do enjoy looking at the jewellery pages. I drool over the diamonds, rubies and emeralds. I also adore the polki and jadau showcased. The jewellery pages are to die for, with the models looking so pretty and actually smiling, not scowling as they do in fashion spreads!
Most magazines produce at least one bridal issue every year which I have no quarrel with as brides do need help with their clothes, make-up and beauty prepping. The Big Fat Indian Wedding is exemplified in the importance given to the bride‟s appearance. People have told me that this is so, because everyone wants to look at the bride, who must be tall, fair and thin, dressed like a queen and bathed in gold and diamonds. Sari and lehenga designers have a field day pedalling their wares in these so very important magazines -- at horrendously exorbitant rates of course. No doubt they are breathtaking, but you get equally gorgeous lehengas, saris or whatever a bride‟s heart desires at far more affordable rates at conventional sari stores. These stores will tailor your lehenga or your choli in whatever style you wish, they are not far behind the designers! Oh, my dears you should read the bits about pre wedding relaxation spa rituals. One would imagine that a woman was getting readied for a Mughal zenana, not her wedding day! A bridal issue will tell the bride to be about beauty rituals she ought to follow from a year before the D-Day. The gym routines, the facial schedules, body massages, body wraps, are all mapped out for the beautification of the bridal flower including a body soak in mik and rose petals! Huh! What difference does that make? Choices are given by magazines, about where to go, which package to ask for, all at crazy prices. The large amounts of money the magazines exhort a bride to spend for that one evening is unbelievable. The ground reality being, of course, that most people do not have such over the top weddings, this being a trend in Northern Indian cities rather than anywhere else.
Fashion magazines now incorporate holiday destinations as well! All very fancy of course, most of them being foreign locales. Well, with our currency being what it is, what can I say, except sigh!!! Seriously, how many can afford it? How many beach weddings are there really? How many brides buy Swarovski studded bikinis? Think of the Indian woman, not the metro type, but the essential Indian woman. How relevant can these magazines be to even a fraction of them?
Such magazines are very entertaining no doubt, but at some level, I think they cause angst and want. They lead to undesirable behaviour patterns among the younger ones, who skimp on food in order to have money for clothes and makeup! This is very true, and not just for girls trying to break into show-biz. Well, most young girls, no matter what field they are in want to look skeletal. Even if they live at home they are rebellious, often skipping entire meals! But when they are from smaller towns they live alone, and eat some noodles, or soup, or an egg with bread, or vada pav from the road, and use all their money on ammunition for their auditions and screenings!
Fashion magazines thrive on gloss. Glossy paper, glossy ads and unreal worlds populated with Benz, Audi, BMW, Rolex, Omega, Cartier.......... They actually have a very small customer target base in India. Other readers read them for fun! But some like me also think about their implications.
These publications are put together by a bunch of airheads on the principle of who pays the most wins. I have read somewhere that they get gifts from big brands for themselves. If these magazines were not so enticing they would have a very small readership. They play on human nature. They instil a greed in you. So what do we do with these magazines? Enjoy them, get entertained, love them if we must, and then, throw in the trash where they belong.
Read more on www DOT crescobooks DOT com