By narendra raghunath
installation at Cept, Ahmedabad
This essay discusses the idea of clothing, identity, definition, utility and possibility cloth offers in its formulation and the importance of fashion in the formation of visual culture as faith act upon it
Lady Gaga, the current singing sensation, while attending a fashion show in Paris UMBDNE (Use but Do Not Eat Meat) wearing an outfit made of red meat has made big headlines recently. Although nothing much was heard of anyone else wearing it thereafter, it certainly achieved the objective that it was supposed to evoke, it unleashed a cascade of news outpouring across the world and thereby establishing Lady Gaga, the icon.
Earlier, fashion identified with costumes and accessories has come a long way more than dressing or covering up. With ever-changing positions of human interactions and priorities, fashion also carried equally complex and intrinsic layers to its outer sheen.
The ability to derive an artificial makeover to supplement our inabilities is one of the decisive factors that separate human beings in the animal world. Our ancestors were smart enough to realise this and in this survival game of the fittest, where domination, unity or camouflage are essential prerequisites. In order to dominate, unite or camouflage within the animal world, where others were naturally more colourful and powerful to achieve the objectives, they artificially created the makeovers for their inabilities like weapons, cloth, language and houses and so on and so forth. To a great extent, the history of civilization so far has been an effort in that direction.
The idea of dominating, uniting and camouflaging with artificial supplements has not changed from human trait since then. The cloth, the most important supplement for our inability, tells no other story: it helps human being to dominate, unite or camouflage. So do the embellishments and accessories. It plays the game of exclusivity (domination), trend (unity) or mass production (camouflage) and collectively represented as fashion. Simultaneously it is also important to look at the thrust society gives this power of visuals, as it carries the social agenda of symbolic representation of social strata and its utilitarian objectives.
In this context, the idea of Lady Gaga’s non-wearable meat dress becoming a phenomenon can be better understood as it is not meant to be a skin cover or a dress, but it is an extravaganza. It is also a process of icon building, meaning-making, mass marketing or a popular belief system; the other intrinsic layers of fashion.
Fashion, as it is popularly perceived, operates at different levels in society. One at the individual level- the tailored one, another at the collective level- the mass-produced, and the next one at visual art level – better known as the ramp exhibition.
Cloth deals with many issues and possibilities in human society to confront or conform the day to day reality of human life. At many levels, it responds to the human situation and at times, becoming the response itself, thereby fashion becomes the mediator in manifestation.
There are few things that are very important to an idea in fashion. Property, possession, indulgence, identity, power elevation and acceptance are some of those significant factors that shape up a fashion. Strangely we find that these factors are also part of some belief systems that are personal and social simultaneously. Like any other human belief system, it has a strong undercurrent of faith built in it.
For example, when one accumulates wealth, it will be reflected upon their accumulation by way of decorations, embellishments, exclusiveness and luxury. These decisions are based on popular perception, cultural consciousness and social acceptance. While the latter two act as a constraint from the past, the popular perception derives its space from the contemporary practices, influences, possibilities, needs and necessities. This combination of the conservatism of cultural consciousness, social acceptance and adventurism of popular perception, often gives fashion a cyclical effect. History of fashion proves that between social probity and performance for inspiration, it always has to go back in time again and again, so as to satisfy the human need.
Throughout the twentieth century, we can find the undercurrents of the renaissance, where the individual ascertains humanism, art deco, when the industrial revolution brought forth notions of gender and human equality and jeans that radicalized human attitude of a free spirit, keeping the above-said combination keeping its strains intact in fashion.
Post economic liberalisation in India we are experiencing the situations what once Europe had went through during renaissance. Over enthusiasm for masculinity - heroes like Sanjay Dutt, six-pack Shah Rukh Khan, ‘Ghajini’ Aamir Khan, shirtless Salman Khan, John Abraham, Shahid Kapoor who project clear masculinity as heroes, liberal feminity like the celebrated miniskirts of Urmila Matondkar, Kajol, mini frocks of Rani Mukherjee, revealing outfits/ bikini-clad Bipasha Basu, Malaika Arora Khan and zero size champion, Kareena Kapoor, attempts to define feminine q qualities like body-hugging/ revealing/ elevating dress lines and women-specific magazines and metrosexual and same-sex relationships emerging out of closets are some of the few traits in our society today, we find have a resemblance to renaissance era Europe. Like in the renaissance, where these changes in social preferences have had severe social consequences, in India also, today we see a serious public resentment building towards some of these social changes. Anti Chandramohan(MSU) and MF Husain protest against their art, anti-Valentine Day protests in UP, Maharashtra and Karnataka, anti jeans/thigh hugging dress code in Anna University, Bangalore University and IIM Bangalore guidelines for girl students are classic examples for the same.
Although many of these developments are only taking place in urban and semi-urban India, it is important to note that there is also a migration taking place in fashion and clothing in rural India. Although on the one hand, Punjabi dresses have replaced almost all the Indian female dresses, on the contrary, in rural Punjab and some other states, the traditional dresses are slowly getting edged out by the jeans/ shorts and tops.
Food ceases to be a geographical identity as they are available all over the country. Television, film and other mass media are helping rural India to adopt the urban amenities with a visible impact on the building, interior, furniture, utensils, accessories, cosmetics, language and aesthetics.
Changes may be the order of the day in our socio-cultural life India, but the basic tenets of survival “dominating, uniting and camouflaging” and the basic idioms of fashion “ Property, possession, indulgence, identity/power elevation and acceptance” are still holding a strong conservative grip over these changes. These changes are only allowed in rural India if they accept a local variation to it to adapt its rural conservativism. Jeans in rural India will be different from its counterpart available in urban India. It will have a flavour of its own from village to village and state to state. Actually, the urban India is also not different from its rural counterparts. Delhi trends will be different from Mumbai, Mumbai will be different from Madras and Madras will be different from Kolkata. All these places know how to tame fashion to accommodate their local conservativism.
Perhaps it is only in the arena of the ramp that we may be able to find a defiant sight in fashion. Couture fashion is more about art and creativity and less socially constructive objective. It often trespasses the sublime tenets of conservative fashion to areas that are morally only permissible in art. As the change is an essential prerequisite for human development, in search of it, it is important for art and creativity to digress at times even to the level of social degeneration, anarchy and abandon the functional needs. Only time will be able to say whether such digressions are futile or not. But to save the civilization from rudimentary regimentation and suffocation, such adventurous digressions of art and creativity will have to be preserved and protected. Keeping this in view, if fashion takes such digressions, it deserves a greater acceptance in our society.
Unfortunately in India, most of the designers in our fashion industry are yet to mature to that level. Hopefully, in the coming years, when India shoulders its responsibility of an emerging global power, the reflections may be seen in the couture fashion as well.
installation at Cept, Ahmedabad
This essay discusses the idea of clothing, identity, definition, utility and possibility cloth offers in its formulation and the importance of fashion in the formation of visual culture as faith act upon it
Lady Gaga, the current singing sensation, while attending a fashion show in Paris UMBDNE (Use but Do Not Eat Meat) wearing an outfit made of red meat has made big headlines recently. Although nothing much was heard of anyone else wearing it thereafter, it certainly achieved the objective that it was supposed to evoke, it unleashed a cascade of news outpouring across the world and thereby establishing Lady Gaga, the icon.
Earlier, fashion identified with costumes and accessories has come a long way more than dressing or covering up. With ever-changing positions of human interactions and priorities, fashion also carried equally complex and intrinsic layers to its outer sheen.
The ability to derive an artificial makeover to supplement our inabilities is one of the decisive factors that separate human beings in the animal world. Our ancestors were smart enough to realise this and in this survival game of the fittest, where domination, unity or camouflage are essential prerequisites. In order to dominate, unite or camouflage within the animal world, where others were naturally more colourful and powerful to achieve the objectives, they artificially created the makeovers for their inabilities like weapons, cloth, language and houses and so on and so forth. To a great extent, the history of civilization so far has been an effort in that direction.
The idea of dominating, uniting and camouflaging with artificial supplements has not changed from human trait since then. The cloth, the most important supplement for our inability, tells no other story: it helps human being to dominate, unite or camouflage. So do the embellishments and accessories. It plays the game of exclusivity (domination), trend (unity) or mass production (camouflage) and collectively represented as fashion. Simultaneously it is also important to look at the thrust society gives this power of visuals, as it carries the social agenda of symbolic representation of social strata and its utilitarian objectives.
In this context, the idea of Lady Gaga’s non-wearable meat dress becoming a phenomenon can be better understood as it is not meant to be a skin cover or a dress, but it is an extravaganza. It is also a process of icon building, meaning-making, mass marketing or a popular belief system; the other intrinsic layers of fashion.
Fashion, as it is popularly perceived, operates at different levels in society. One at the individual level- the tailored one, another at the collective level- the mass-produced, and the next one at visual art level – better known as the ramp exhibition.
Cloth deals with many issues and possibilities in human society to confront or conform the day to day reality of human life. At many levels, it responds to the human situation and at times, becoming the response itself, thereby fashion becomes the mediator in manifestation.
There are few things that are very important to an idea in fashion. Property, possession, indulgence, identity, power elevation and acceptance are some of those significant factors that shape up a fashion. Strangely we find that these factors are also part of some belief systems that are personal and social simultaneously. Like any other human belief system, it has a strong undercurrent of faith built in it.
For example, when one accumulates wealth, it will be reflected upon their accumulation by way of decorations, embellishments, exclusiveness and luxury. These decisions are based on popular perception, cultural consciousness and social acceptance. While the latter two act as a constraint from the past, the popular perception derives its space from the contemporary practices, influences, possibilities, needs and necessities. This combination of the conservatism of cultural consciousness, social acceptance and adventurism of popular perception, often gives fashion a cyclical effect. History of fashion proves that between social probity and performance for inspiration, it always has to go back in time again and again, so as to satisfy the human need.
Throughout the twentieth century, we can find the undercurrents of the renaissance, where the individual ascertains humanism, art deco, when the industrial revolution brought forth notions of gender and human equality and jeans that radicalized human attitude of a free spirit, keeping the above-said combination keeping its strains intact in fashion.
Post economic liberalisation in India we are experiencing the situations what once Europe had went through during renaissance. Over enthusiasm for masculinity - heroes like Sanjay Dutt, six-pack Shah Rukh Khan, ‘Ghajini’ Aamir Khan, shirtless Salman Khan, John Abraham, Shahid Kapoor who project clear masculinity as heroes, liberal feminity like the celebrated miniskirts of Urmila Matondkar, Kajol, mini frocks of Rani Mukherjee, revealing outfits/ bikini-clad Bipasha Basu, Malaika Arora Khan and zero size champion, Kareena Kapoor, attempts to define feminine q qualities like body-hugging/ revealing/ elevating dress lines and women-specific magazines and metrosexual and same-sex relationships emerging out of closets are some of the few traits in our society today, we find have a resemblance to renaissance era Europe. Like in the renaissance, where these changes in social preferences have had severe social consequences, in India also, today we see a serious public resentment building towards some of these social changes. Anti Chandramohan(MSU) and MF Husain protest against their art, anti-Valentine Day protests in UP, Maharashtra and Karnataka, anti jeans/thigh hugging dress code in Anna University, Bangalore University and IIM Bangalore guidelines for girl students are classic examples for the same.
Although many of these developments are only taking place in urban and semi-urban India, it is important to note that there is also a migration taking place in fashion and clothing in rural India. Although on the one hand, Punjabi dresses have replaced almost all the Indian female dresses, on the contrary, in rural Punjab and some other states, the traditional dresses are slowly getting edged out by the jeans/ shorts and tops.
Food ceases to be a geographical identity as they are available all over the country. Television, film and other mass media are helping rural India to adopt the urban amenities with a visible impact on the building, interior, furniture, utensils, accessories, cosmetics, language and aesthetics.
Changes may be the order of the day in our socio-cultural life India, but the basic tenets of survival “dominating, uniting and camouflaging” and the basic idioms of fashion “ Property, possession, indulgence, identity/power elevation and acceptance” are still holding a strong conservative grip over these changes. These changes are only allowed in rural India if they accept a local variation to it to adapt its rural conservativism. Jeans in rural India will be different from its counterpart available in urban India. It will have a flavour of its own from village to village and state to state. Actually, the urban India is also not different from its rural counterparts. Delhi trends will be different from Mumbai, Mumbai will be different from Madras and Madras will be different from Kolkata. All these places know how to tame fashion to accommodate their local conservativism.
Perhaps it is only in the arena of the ramp that we may be able to find a defiant sight in fashion. Couture fashion is more about art and creativity and less socially constructive objective. It often trespasses the sublime tenets of conservative fashion to areas that are morally only permissible in art. As the change is an essential prerequisite for human development, in search of it, it is important for art and creativity to digress at times even to the level of social degeneration, anarchy and abandon the functional needs. Only time will be able to say whether such digressions are futile or not. But to save the civilization from rudimentary regimentation and suffocation, such adventurous digressions of art and creativity will have to be preserved and protected. Keeping this in view, if fashion takes such digressions, it deserves a greater acceptance in our society.
Unfortunately in India, most of the designers in our fashion industry are yet to mature to that level. Hopefully, in the coming years, when India shoulders its responsibility of an emerging global power, the reflections may be seen in the couture fashion as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment