- A model walked the ramp during the grand finale of Lakme Fashion Week Winter Festival, 2011 in Mumbai.
Shefalee Vasudev, founding editor of Marie Claire in India, interviewed more than 300 people for her book “Powder Room: The Untold Story of Indian Fashion” (Random House India), released in India this week. A chronicle of the country’s fashion industry, from its tailors to the luxury sector, the book charts the increasing influence of fashion in shaping consumer psyche in cities and small towns across India. Mumbai, naturally, looms large in the background. From Ludhiana ladies and their near maniacal obsession with designerwear to spoilt young bridezillas, it seems everyone draws part of their fashion identity from the city.
The Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time spoke with Ms. Vasudev, now associate editor at the Indian Express, about the increasing influence of Bollywood on luxury, and why the fashionista is an entirely Mumbai construct.
Edited excerpts:
WSJ: From your book it seems the Indian luxury consumer pops up in the most unexpected places. What was your most interesting discovery during the course of your research?
Ms. Vasudev: It occurred during research of the Ludhiana chapter, where I found these ladies self-absorbed with brands. I asked one interviewee what was the most stressful thing in her life. She has a two year old kid. She told me it was living up to the pressure of finding the one object that no one else had, and how that was no longer possible because what she could afford all her friends could afford now. She lived in constant pressure of owning the one luxury brand more than bringing up her child.
WSJ: Even though Mumbai is considered a fashion capital of the country, the city lurks quietly throughout this book, whether in society ladies wanting to ape the ‘Mumbai look’ or copying Bollywood trends. Was that intentional?
Ms. Vasudev: Well partly, because a lot of books have recently come up around Mumbai: Sonia Faleiro’s ‘Beautiful Thing,’ ‘Shantaram,’ ‘Maximum City’ to name a few. So Mumbai is a loud character around us, which we always look to when we try to make an attempt to understand new India… I focused on choosing the most moving stories. I made an excel sheet to see what could go where. Mumbai wasn’t coming up necessarily as a big thing, but I was happy to keep it that way.
WSJ: In the book, the idea of the fashionista very much comes across as a Mumbai construct.
Ms. Vasudev: Films have had huge influence on how India dresses up. People have just discovered individuality in dressing; if we try to say how India has dressed until now it’s very difficult to pin down the definition. But the fashionista who is half caricature and half glamourina, she definitely lives in Bombay. She wants big brands, knows how to hold a champagne flute, but also finds Bandra’s Linking road as good as a mall. She understands the mix very well.
There’s a more effortful casualness in dressing up in Bombay. In the north, in Delhi, people are so obsessed with announcing status, they forget that a short dress can be picked up from Bandra and worn with a Burberry bag. Bombay brings out the headiness of party culture more stereotypically and that mindset lives primarily in Bombay. The rest of country replays it and redresses it according to regional differences.
WSJ: You are particularly damning about a young Mumbai bride who you follow while she is shopping for her bridal trousseau. Did you find her to be typical of the wealthy Mumbai consumer?
Ms. Vasudev: I found her rather insensitive to a lot of realities. She was completely obsessed with ideas of, ‘Well if my father has a few crores, why shouldn’t he spend it on my wedding. How can anyone do budgeting, it’s not my problem, it’s my dad’s problem and when else is he going to show off his money if not at my wedding.’
She hires a shopper who makes this enormous list of brands she should have and she was completely sold on fashion mags. I found there’s a certain crowd among young people who live by the fashion magazines because they’re still new in our lives. And by hook or crook, she wanted everyone around her to live up to that ideal. All her relatives were sent out to get clothes of a certain kind. The family was obsessively asking all women to dress in particular kind of salwars for that occasion. I found her besotted by the idea of spending. She was in a smaller way Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City”… She was peculiar but good looking and very hip. I think she is what young wealthy Bombay is today.
WSJ: One of the big takeaways from the book is that even the most exclusive luxury brands in India need Bollywood to survive.
Ms. Vasudev: Luxury needs Punjab as much as it needs Bollywood to survive. Bollywood itself has not been customer. It survives on freebies, so we have more and more Anushka Sharmas and Deepika Padukones being coated in Dior, Ferragamo and Chanel. So we look at them and have flesh examples of stars who look good in Dior as opposed to models in magazines. But I don’t think Bollywood is the customer. The real customers of luxury brands are the rich in India – they live in west Delhi and Punjab.
Bollywood has been a role model for all twists and turns of the fashion story of India and for luxury too, but also Bollywood stars themselves are quite overawed by the brands. We don’t see them ...
more read here
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar