I am the walrus
STYLE
| When you walk into a store hoping to buy an outfit which you hope will make you look like a million bucks, even though you may only pay a fraction of that amount, what comes between you and that reality is the cruel salesman. Cut to a store in Delhi's South Extension market where dresses (this summer's must-buy clothing item) hung invitingly and had that "buy-me-now" look about them. |
| Just as I was trying to make-up my mind as to which dress I should try on, one nattily dressed salesman sidled up to me and said in soft tones, "Try that dress. It has a great fit." The dress in question was purplish and I thought that if a man, even a man who is paid to say this, recommends a dress as having a great fit, there must be something to it. Abandoning the dress I had originally thought I would try, I tried the purple dress. |
| I looked in the full-length mirror in the trial room, hoping to having been transformed into Kate Moss (in fashion terms this would count as being very good) but what the mirror showed me was an unsightly beached walrus. Make that a pregnant beached walrus (very, very bad). |
| In short, not a pretty picture at all. I left the store without buying anything even though I was determined to, and spent the next many hours wondering about the slip between the salesman's pitch of a great fit and what the dress actually did to me. Nobody looks forward to experiencing a walrus moment in their lives. |
| The moral of this sad and terrible tale of heartbreak and cruelty is that though India is struggling to be a fashion destination to all and sundry, those who man the frontlines of this fashion revolution are clueless as to how to and who to sell what. |
| Assuming for a moment that the dress was indeed a good fit, maybe my body type wasn't meant for that kind of dress. And the salesman, given that he was selling a dress that cost upwards of Rs 3,500, should have been trained better to gauge what to and what not to recommend to me. |
| That hasn't been the only slip that many shoppers face. International high street fashion brands, in an effort to retain customers, have introduced in-store stylists who help put together a look that is trendy and individualistic. Here, you would be lucky to have a decent salesperson to attend to you. |
| If even international high street fashion brand stores are guilty of this in India, god help you if you make the supreme mistake of walking into a saree shop. The sales staff in one well-known saree store were discussing complicated twists and turns in their relationships with their mothers-in-law, what they cooked and ate before coming to work (if you must know: parathas. Had it been winter it would have been muli ka paratha) and in-house politics. The customer (in this case me) was incidental to their existence. |
| In one shopping week, I managed to look like a walrus (minus the moustache), and was ignored in favour of personal gossip and the day's menu at home and store gossip. |
| Nobody needs another skirt or a pair of trousers but well-trained sales staff in a store that sells clothes and other fashion items like footwear, accessories can make the difference between someone buying vast quantities or leaving the store distressed to the point of vowing never to return. Fashion shopping in India will remain a chore rather than an experience worth repeating only if staff is trained to perfection. Not too much to ask, is it? |