The Other Country by Mrinal Pande

Author:Mrinal Pande [Pande, Mrinal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184755725
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Is the Shoe on the Other Foot for Real?

Going through some of the weekly supplements of popular Indian dailies and periodicals, you suddenly realize how, a largely white, minority in the world may have successfully conned the women in rest of the world into thinking that fair skin, light eyes and tall, size-zero bodies make women superior, when all it does is to make them more prone to skin cancer and anorexia. It is also becoming quite common now to have some glamorous Botoxed style icon waxing eloquent over women from India’s fabled middle classes who, we are told, have at long last discovered feminism, good living and high fashion, in that order. As proof they cite the fact that there is now a growing class in India which can be seen using high-end luxury goods such as shoes by Louis Vuitton with 17 cm heels, or a black pony skin ‘footwear statement’ from Christian Louboutin (with 16 cm heels). Of course, the markets are full of cheap imitations as well, but the discerning eye can always make out the real thing.

About two decades ago, ten days after the US stockmarket crash of 1987, designer Christian Lacroix launched his Luxe collection in the ground floor of the World Financial Centre in New York. The reason for this outrageous act at a time of acute distress on Wall Street was that the fashion world was increasingly feeling the pressure of feminist attacks on fashion that ‘infantilized’ women. This had resulted in the sales of fashion garments and accessories going downhill. The mission of designers like Lacroix was now to woo these newly self-assertive women back to the world of high fashion and high expense accounts, and once again make pretty dolls and playthings out of them. So, while the stocks fell, models on the ramp displayed flouncy gowns with cinched waists, extreme add-ons and fashion accessories that cost a bomb. (The show, however, was a flop and a year later a retail analyst with Goldman Sachs called it a ‘marketing blunder’). But in India today, we see a repeat of the same phenomenon in our fashion shows.

‘Feast your eyes on these shoes,’ screams the headline of an article in a popular weekly about fashion footwear. ‘These are the shape of things to come.’ The article is, of course, reproduced from the style section of a British daily. This in a year when the world is facing the worst ever food crisis and millions are threatened with starvation and droughts and eviction from their natural habitat. No wonder designers from the West are coming to India in droves.

It is a well-known fact that the androgynous world of high fashion and fashion designers traditionally holds women in low esteem and delights in selling them punitively restrictive and outrageously priced articles. The ideal the average Indian women is being urged to imitate, and that our fashion shows and mainstream media advertisements promote so liberally, is almost impossible for the average Indian woman to achieve.

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