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.