Commerce and calculation

MALAVIKA SANGGHVI

back to issue

THE ginger haired designer couldn’t contain his giggles as he narrated his story: ‘And there they were Safari-suited father, ghungat-covered mother and blushing bride to be – all from Haryana – all large as whales, sitting in front of me with swatches, sequins, Swaroswki baubles, ordering a king’s ransom of wedding clothes. Money was obviously not an issue, and from what I understood – in their case – nothing succeeded as much as excess. But all their choices were conservative: long sleeved cholis that reached the waist and ghararas as capacious as tents. So what’s new I yawned – just another of my regular clients for whom I would design the usual over-the-top trousseau of behenji bling. But then when they got up to leave, the to-be bride hung back, until she was sure her parents were out of ear shot. "Excuse me sirs," she whispered to me conspiratorially, "I also wearing the Capris".’

Capris?! Those French calf-length pants that were popularized in the seventies and embraced by reed-thin, cigar-smoking women on the Riviera? What was an overweight, conservative Haryanvi bride doing dreaming of Capris?

For the answer to that and the mysteries of Indian women and their tryst with fashion, you have to acquaint yourself with centuries of sartorial sociology.

Even though India (until very recently) was spared the tyranny of fashion as the West knows it: the rigour of four seasons, the sheer commerce of big department stores collaborating with designers to move merchandize in a particular direction, and the hype and hoopla that accompanies this multi-million dollar industry – India’s claim to fashion, or elegant dressing – was a serious one.

Before the British came in the garb of colonizers and united the states under one imperial umbrella, there was a rich tradition of Indian states patronizing and nurturing craft and skills like jewellery making, weaving, embroidery and embellishment, which resulted in exquisite ensembles worn by both men and women of the middle and upper echelons of society.

 

On their part the maharajahs played their role as fashion models, often commissioning international jewellers and stylists to come up with fantastic creations like in the case of the Maharaja of Kapurthala and the Nizam of Hyderabad for whom Cartier and Bulgari made some of their most spectacular designs. Photographs from that era depict both men and women resplendent in brocades and silks, in pearls and diamonds as colourful and richly adorned as peacocks. It was a time for a celebration of the spirit – in art, culture and personal style. The British in their sola topis and twill suits could do little to dent this exuberance.

But freedom is won in many ways, and no one understood this more than that wily barrister from Gujarat called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. If a break had to be made with the past and an imperialist colonizer defeated and sent home packing, it could only be done by firing the imagination of the masses with ‘out of the box’ and innovative ways.

Gandhi made revolution a way of life in India. Satyagraha involved not just revolting against the system – the laws, the state the establishment – but rethinking the very essence of people’s lives, and clothes was just one of them.

So the humble charkha became the wheel on which the aspirations of a nation turned. A call to ban factory-made cloth and western styles was given by the Mahatma. In his visionary way he addressed something as basic and important in people’s lives as their clothes. Overnight this movement to ban imported and mill-made fabric fired the imagination of the populace. Bonfires of imported items were the leitmotif of the landscape. Gandhi transcended fashion by making the uniform of a revolution, khadi, the fashion of an era.

Then, once freedom was achieved and a new republic came into being, and India free and fearless was embarking on her tryst with destiny, Nehru, an effortlessly stylish man gave the country not only its first stable and free government, but inadvertently a staple of the Paris runways, the Nehru jacket.

It was a time of self-invention and discovery. Everywhere people were innovating and interpreting their personal styles. It was a time when the world was new and needed new clothes to step out in; a time of innocence, of simplicity – of naiveté even. People wore what made them happy, what they were comfortable in and what suited the weather: saris and salwar kameezes for the women, bush shirts and trousers or kurta pajamas for the men.

 

This was in the decade after independence when there was no self-conscious preening, no servitude to the fashion gods, no diktats from divas to follow. People took their cues from either the movies (the blouse Nargis wore in ‘Awara’ for instance, or how Dev Anand slung his jacket on his shoulders in ‘Guide’), or from politics, where socialism required a certain austerity.

As a simple rule of thumb politicians wore khadi, maharanis wore French chiffon, factory workers wore drip dry pants and bush shirts, and the young tried to find means, fair and foul, to cadge their Levis from abroad. That was the extent of India’s fashion foray.

Fashion in India was a home grown affair. ‘Ashok Tailor’ down the road was the maestro, Mumbai-spun cottons were the raw material and out-of-date copies of Vogue and Elle were the blueprints that the urban fashion conscious Indian woman turned to for her sartorial splendour.

 

The ready wear industry was virtually nonexistent. Most women wore saris, which they bought and accessorized with tailor-made blouses and petticoats. But if their sartorial taste ran to anything more ambitious like dresses, or trousers or tunics, they had to come up with ‘patterns’ and fabric and a tailor who’d measure them meticulously, take a small advance payment and then a couple of weeks later deliver the garment.

Towards this end magazines like Femina and Eves Weekly had their in-house ‘designers’ (the ubiquitous Dinoo Vatcha, was one of them) who would offer readers their visions of sari borders, blouses and churidar kameezes in each issue which they could either make themselves or order from a tailor.

But even when the rest of India was engaged in this exercise, there were a few inspired women, mostly inheritors of a Gandhian tradition, who were championing the cause of hand-spun and handloom. India’s newly-born and hard-won freedom after all required a metaphor to clothe itself with. Thus the cottage industries and state crafts movement spearheaded by the likes of Pupul Jayakar gained ground and catered to the likes of artsy women who saw intrinsic beauty in Rajasthani mirror work blouses and handwoven saris from Orissa.

Then, a few enterprising individuals like the ubiquitous designer Mike Kriplani foresaw the ‘fashion’ trend and placed themselves ahead of the curve. They began marketing their Ashok Tailor salwar kameez suits as high fashion, and met with reasonable success in middle class India. At the other end of this spectrum, there was Sunita Pitamber (Artistic) and Parmeshwar Godrej (Dancing Silks) in Mumbai and Rohit Khosla (in Delhi) who catered to a select clutch of rich and stylish women. This phenomena found its apogee when Tarun Tahiliani, a Wharton educated son of an Admiral returned to India and established Ensemble, the country’s first high end boutique, in the early eighties.

So much for the boutique end of the business but there was still not much to report about in the ready to wear segment. Badly tailored ready-made polyester pants and shirts could be purchased at motheaten department stores, and there was practically no middle range for ready wear for fashion conscious women.

And this is pretty much how India would have continued dressing had Manmohan Singh and his merry men not come along in the early nineties and unshackled the economy from its socialist protectionist yoke, allowing international consumer brands to set up business on our shores,

 

At first there was a trickle. The Italian middle range ready wear brand Benetton came in, and was a moderate success for buyers in South Mumbai and South Delhi. Soon other labels like Wranglers and Mexx followed and the trickle became a steady stream. And before you knew it, there was a torrent of labels of every range and hue to adorn the new Indian man and woman.

But this breakthrough was still only confined to the middle range, and even though Pierre Cardin tried hard to market himself in India as a true-blue French haute couture designer, his merchandize and the price it commanded was nowhere near the high-fashion levels on the runways of Paris.

But while it appeared as if there was little happening on the ground regarding the big fashion brands, in truth the action was taking place elsewhere and offshore.

Like lions circling for the kill the luxury fashion brands were tracking developments in India closely. The signs obviously were encouraging. Reform had put more money in the pockets of urban India, and this, coupled with travel, and the entrance of big glossy titles like Elle, and Vogue and Marie Claire into India meant that the Indian woman was ready to join her sisters the world over in their worship of Gucci and Pucci. The Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessy group made some initial reconnaissance trips to India in the mid-nineties, the PPR group (Gucci, Balenciaga, and YSL, Stella McCartney and so on) followed soon after.

 

Over a salad at the Willingdon Club in Mumbai, I met the PPR Chairman, Francois Henri Pinault. He was embarking on a field trip after lunch that day: first to Thanks, a high end boutique in mid-Mumbai’s Worli, which stocked labels like Etro, Dolce Gabbana and Prada; then a walk down Linking Road, a bazaar of cheap and cheerful fashion accessories for the young and restless and finally dinner at the swish residence of Abu and Sandeep, the pre-eminent high fashion designers.

Listening to his itinerary, I was both amused and impressed. Because, unbeknownst to the billionaire, he was covering in a day the entire gamut of India’s fashion landscape. Its high-end luxury retailers, its low-end fashion bazaars and its ultimate and celebrated Uber high fashion maestros. In different configurations and combinations this landscape was present in every A and B town in India. And for a group like PPR, this was vital information to acquaint itself with while staking out its territory.

 

To be sure, when the big boys, the international luxury brands, arrived in India flexing their advertising budgets for new markets in Asia, they’d done their homework. They knew that the Indian woman was intrinsically conservative. She’d be quite happy to wear the designs of the Rohit Bals and the Abu Sandeeps, the double palluv saris, the choli blouses and the ghararas they created with such flair. She might even go so far as to top her saris with bodysuits from Donna Karan or don bustiers from Rina Dhaka. But little black dresses? Ball gowns? Chanel suits? High waisted trousers and Jimmy Choo’s?

The big boys knew that a good bit of conditioning would have to be done before the Indian consumer was ready to bite their bait and buy the wares they were really serious about selling. So they did the only thing they could do under the circumstances: they co-opted Bollywood in their strategy.

Bollywood under the aegis of Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar had in the nineties assumed ever more prominently the role of India’s fashion harbinger. Not from magazines, not from the ramp, not from western shores but from the silver screen did such staples of Indian fashion originate like the string choli (Madhuri Dixit in Ham Apke Hain Kaun) or the heavily embellished sherwanis the actors wore in the party scenes of Dilwale Dulhaniya.

And so in their endeavour to change the way Indian women dressed and shopped, the luxury brands turned to the Priyanka Chopras, Amitabh Bachchans and the Shah Rukh Khans. And they were aided and abetted by the glossy titles that were also invested in the same aim. It was a hand in glove operation. Fendi flew the lissome beauty Shweta Bachchan to Paris to model its gowns for a photo shoot for L’Oreal. Preity Zinta was shot wearing Chanel. Prada and Alexander McQueen found their own clothes hangers from the gaggle of Bollywood beauties to show off their wares.

Soon the masses realized that Indian women could wear western wear – not fusion, but actual serious leg-displaying, shoulder-revealing, hip-hugging dresses and gowns – and look good!

Slowly the ground was laid. At Bollywood events like film awards and premiers, the brands made sure their presence was felt. It was soon becoming more common to see ball gowns in silks and satins worn than the usual saris and salwar suits. And sure enough, the effect was percolating down to the audiences it was meant for.

 

Go to any event today where ‘fashionable’ India congregates, and you can be sure there will be more people wearing western branded wear than others. With the twin onslaught of the ready wear industry and the glossies flaunting international brand names, Ashok Tailor is an engendered species. Now India has not one but two fashion weeks. Designers have become social icons, occupying centre-stage in the social firmament. Magazines and TV shows dedicate space and air time to information explicitly about which labels are being worm by whom. Not only are films the forerunners of fashion but designers are now directing films (Manish Malhotra and Sabyasachi Mukherjee – if Tom Ford can do it in Hollywood, can India be far behind?)

Today, the fashion industry has given rise to a spate of ancillary industries, like fitness beauty and make-up. Indian women win international beauty titles, are considered as leading ladies for Bond films and are regularly seen on international best dressed lists.

Gone are the days when women would find a ‘pattern’ in a magazine, take it to their neighbourhood tailor and be measured for their statistics. Today, whether it is indigenous designers or international labels, everything is commerce driven, premeditated, and calculated. The age of personal dressing, home grown fashion, ad hoc sartorial decisions is over.

In a recession filled West where disposable incomes are shrinking, India is being targeted by more and more brands. The market is in Asia, the growth is in India and places like China and Brazil, and the trajectory is obvious: create the demand by marketing with the help of films and the media. Place yourself in the environment. Stock your stores with enough merchandize and then watch as the numbers come in and your bottom lines bulge.

 

This is the reason why I despair for India’s tryst with ‘fashion’. Far from being the way it was earlier when people dressed to please themselves, to express their identities, and to suit the weather, it is now a question of following the diktats of commerce and calculation. There is nothing organic or innocent about the way India dresses now. Indian women have traded in their sartorial independence to fall in line with the marketing strategies of big international brands.

Which is why, you see, a Haryanvi bride, as large as a whale, with no previous history of western fashion, is now riveted by the thought of wearing Capris!

top