Can And Will You Ever Care About Fashion?

8

Tweet

We all have an opinion on fashion. Usually its bad. Some say its tamasha, some vulgarity, some others think it is foolish to talk about fashion in a country that has more than 800 million hungry people. Let me then, as I conclude my tenth fashionweek, try to explain that all of points of view are equally valid and invalid. Fashion like art is about taste. It's about aesthetics, its about something integral to the way we live - clothes. Now there are good clothes and bad clothes. Good clothes make us feel better about ourselves, bad clothes, well, bad clothes hurt more than our self esteem, they hurt our aesthetic sense. In all the years that I have seen the fashionweek, there has been some great moments, many terrible ones. Some have made me cringe with pain and despair at the lack of....

The Hysteria Of Malfunctions

10

Tweet

For the last few minutes, the temperature at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week has suddenly soared. All around me reporters from Hindi channels are running around, mikes are being tossed, lives done, questions asked - you would think there is a big story breaking at the fashionweek. Actually its nothing. A neckline of a dress in the show of one of India's best designers, a creative genius, Rajesh Pratap Singh, slipped, showing one nipple. That's it! The Hindi channels have found the story of their lives. This evening, the shows will be full of endless loops of that one shot of the dress slipping, camouflaged badly so that the channels can claim that they were trying to hide the nipple and yet showing it quite clearly, exciting their viewers and themselves. This story now will go on and on and on as if....

It Doesn't Matter What Brands You Wear Anymore

1

Tweet

What really counts is how you wear them? How you mix and match them? From the time, 2004 I think, when Karl Lagerfeld designed clothes for Zara, fashion has never been the same again. Models like Kate Moss have taught us perhaps the most important lesson of fashion - you do not have to be a brand slave to be fashionable. As long as you wear or carry one eye-catching element in your ensemble, you are IT and that doesn't mean, like this magazine girl I saw at the fashionweek last time, that you have to dress from head to toe in Moschino. So for all of you who think fashion is not important OR, worse, that you cannot afford it anymore, know that the world of fashion is becoming more democratic than ever before. Today, it doesn't matter what you are wearing as long as....

Do you wear Rohit Bal?

0

Tweet

Most people who have heard the word designer in this country have also heard of a man called Rohit Bal. He is the man most often caught by the cameras dancing a little jig on the runway. He always dances the same way - hips swaying from left to right, bending slightly hip-hop style and arms in the air, fingers pointing to the roof. He has danced this way for a decade, his dust-gold hair, cut in new fashion every season, swinging or perky depending on the mood. This is a man who has invented the idea of the designer in this country, done what the late Rohit Khosla had started to do in the early 90s before his sudden death. Rohit Bal is also a man who has never diverted from the idea of India in his clothes. His clothes have forever and always been predominantly....

Finally, Sensible Clothes

1

Tweet

This is a strange year for Indian fashion. This is perhaps the first year when we are, overall, seeing sensible clothes on the runway. Clothes that women and men wear day-to-day. Clothes that reflect our lifestyle, our cities, our parties, our hangout places and our sensibilities. Today, in many ways has been a boring day for me as a TV journalist. Its day one of the fashionweek and a bit of tamasha helps. It creates a buzz, sets the ball rolling. Instead all we have had is Bipasha Basu on the runway for Gauri and Nainika Karan - the sisters of swingy urbane gowns - and Ameesha Patel looking on and singing along to 'Its a sin' and really not much of the turbulence and hoopla that one associates fashionweek with. This season, perhaps waking up to the real world, the runway seems to be a....

Faith In Fashion

3

Tweet

This is my 10th fashion week. 10 times I have gone through this madness, this effervescent mania, this thing that everyone loves to hate. And yet, think about it, it's not just me. Everyone thinks of fashion. All the time. Even in the world of TV journalism, the world where I belong, the world of the instantaneous soundbite and all-round mayhem, think of how clothes determine the person:

• Think Rajdeep Sardesai and you think blue shirts and dark trousers
• Think Sagarika Ghose and you think 'taant' saris from Bengal
• Think Suhasini Haider and you think collared shirts, Nehru jackets and sometimes elegant saris
• Think Barkha Dutt and you think big earrings
• Think Pronoy Roy and you think dark suits, white shirts and red ties
• Think Udayan Mukherjee and you think white shirts, business suits
• Think Shereen....
  
  
  Thursday , December 27, 2007

  TV 2008

  
  

  3

  Tweet

  It has been a year of abuse in news tv. Ask anyone you know who works at a news channel and, if they are honest, they will tell you that we have rarely felt worse about ourselves. Never in the short history of tv journalism in this country have so many people so wholeheartedly said nasty, and scarily true, things about tv reporters and anchors. 2007 has been the year of the sting gone wrong, about all-round fall in the standards of tv reportage as channels fought TRP battles with each other, entertainment channels, infotainment channels and even music channels. We have tried to take perhaps a pinch from each genre in the battle to reinvent news on tv. In the hunt for that all-elusive exclusive, standards at some news channels have fallen lower than ever including that now infamous incident about the Delhi....

  
  
  Tuesday , October 30, 2007

  Who's Afraid of Big Bazaar?

  
  

  10

  Tweet

  When I was 18, I never thought I would be sitting in a shopping trolley at 27. Who does? The UN? Sure. The first million by 25. But of course. CEO at 26. Naturally. Since none of the above have come to pass, I'm sitting in a Big Bazaar trolley. Why am I doing this? Funny how these questions pop up. And to think that this retail series was my idea. The least you would think it would do for me is to make me look good but clearly, no. On a Wednesday afternoon, fighting hard to do a "fun" piece to camera or a PTC, this is the only thing I can come up with. In Ludhiana, my colleague Shreya is gambolling, or atleast I think gambolling, with the Sardars. She is wearing a blue dupatta, maybe she will do a DDLJ in the fields?....

  
  
  Monday , October 29, 2007

  My Life In A Shopping Bag

  
  

  16

  Tweet

  The hottest girl in Nashik is called Silky Chabbria. She is sigh-worthy like no other in Nashik. She wears only Reds jeans (handmade, European) and Chanel No 5. Chanel No 5 is also the hottest selling scent in Nashik. It's 8:00 pm and after eight hours of driving and five hours of shooting I can barely stand. But Ritu, close friend of the hottest girl in Nashik, has information to give and when Ritu, close friend of the hottest girl in Nashik, wants to give information, she, naturally, gives information. Tonight she is annoyed, annoyed that I'm shooting a series on retail in small town India in Nashik. Why is Nashik small town? How is Nashik small town? You should meet Silky, she says. Silky is great. Silky is silky. Ritu gives me Silky's mobile no, Ritu says Silky studies fashion design at NIFT Mumbai, she says....

  
  
  Saturday , September 15, 2007

  Vlog: Golden Ganpati

  
  

  2

  Tweet

  A 17 ft Ganpati with a solid gold crown and a solid gold bracelets and solid gold... well, everything, and thousands of devotees lining up the streets of Parel in Mumbai. This is the Lalbaugcha Raja, literally the king of Lalbaug. Hindol Sengupta gets dazzled by the glitter of the golden ganpati and, curiously, it reminds him of home. He videos blogs with his mind slightly blown but his cap very much on.

  • The dazzle of golden ganpati
  GOLDEN GANPATI ....