Wardrobe malfunction

Fashion's fashion is no head-turner. If anything, it's an absolute disappointment.

Bollywood, over the years, much before there was this phenomenon called the fashion designer, has dictated fashion trends in India. Recall the tight kurtas worn with equally tight churidars by actresses like Asha Parekh, Babita and their ilk and the rest of the nation followed suit. Drainpipes worn by Jeetendra and Dharmendra were what men emulated. Years later, Amitabh Bachchan’s flared pants were again what compelled an entire nation to rush to their tailors (they were still tailors back then) to get their own set of flared pants.

Madhuri Dixit’s purple sari in Hum Apke Hain Kaun saw retailers rushing to order the exact same thing, as the masses too wanted just that when they sang and danced at weddings. Even after fashion designers started emerging in India, films and television still played a large role in defining fashion trends. And this is why Madhur Bhandarkar’s latest film Fashion is such a let-down when it comes to fashion.

Of the many disappointments that the film inflicts on the viewer, the clothes, in many ways the central character of the film, are by far the worst. And this is when Bhandarkar has marshalled the services of some of the bigger names in fashion. Pradeep Hirani of Kimaya even appears fleetingly, and his brand is very much part of the film. Vogue India’s cover of the film’s lead actor Priyanka Chopra is also featured. Sunsilk, a brand that Chopra endorses, is there as well. Fashion designer Wendell Rodrigues’ fashion show is also there, as are many of the current top models of the country.

Clothes in any film help define the character. Remember Raj Kapoor’s Chaplinesque attire that helped him construct the common man on screen with such great success? Director Yash Chopra’s heroines made the chiffon sari a must-have for the glamorous fashionista. Internationally, in recent times, in movies like The Devil Wears Prada (also a film on the world of fashion), the clothes are so well selected that they are as much the stars of the film as the actual filmstars. In the globally popular sitcom Sex and the City again, the clothes generated as much interested conversation as the plot. More recently, another American sitcom, Gossip Girls, has become popular largely due to the great clothes the cast wears, episode after episode.

So when a director, in this case Bhandarkar, tries to bring to life the world of fashion, the least you would expect him to do is to research the subject better than he has in this film. Take Kitu Gidwani’s character in the film. As the head of an elite modelling agency that handles top talent, Gidwani should have been dressed to look chic, a la Carla Bruni.

Gidwani in real life was an extremely successful commercial model when she was in her 20s. So she has lived the life that Bhandarkar is trying hard to project in the film. Yet, Gidwani wears some of the most ill-fitting clothes in the film. You wouldn’t have caught Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in Sex and the City) in even one ill-fitting outfit in the entire period that the sitcom was on air.

If Gidwani’s clothes are a disappointment, the film’s lead Priyanka Chopra’s outfits (and she is on-screen for most of the film) are as insipid as her characterisation of her role as a small-town girl who is a struggling model and then becomes a supermodel only to fall from grace and rise again (yes, all this in three long, tortuous hours).

Chopra looks porky, even though physically she is rather slim, and her clothes do her no justice. Her body language in her transition from struggling model to supermodel is surprisingly flat again given the fact that Chopra has actually been a model and did some ramp work before she graduated to films.

And when in the film she finally, triumphantly, walks the ramp at the Paris Fashion Week, she wears an outfit that does nothing for her or for the film or for what the scene is trying to convey. Chopra’s supposed supermodel act is so dull that you begin to wonder if she, in the movie or otherwise, could have ever mouthed the words that were once uttered by Linda Evangelista, a true-blue supermodel: “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000.”

The only actor in the film who understands what it means to be a ramp model is, funnily enough, a non-model in real life: Kangana Ranaut. Though Ranaut in recent times has walked the ramp during fashion weeks, she comes to this film with the least experience of the fashion industry, and yet she understands the ephemeral “attitude” that is required for a ramp model to stand out.

Ranaut’s clothes, too, reflect in some ways what ramp models are likely to wear when not working. In all this, Ranaut is helped in no small measure by her fantastic “model-like” figure. If Ranaut were to ever lose interest in acting, she should consider earning her livelihood as a ramp model.

Mugdha Godse, a model, also makes her debut in the film. Her wardrobe is far, far better and more suitable than poor Chopra’s. Godse, like Ranaut, fits the part better than some of the assorted set of characters that people this unfortunate film.

Bhandarkar deserves a rap on his knuckles for using every possible cliche in the ugliest possible manner (gay designers, gay assistant, coke-snorting, wine-swilling models, the fashion world being ugly while small-town, non-glamorous India is pure and wonderful) and trying to convey a world which he is neither a part of nor understands.

There are, as in any other profession, several stories to be told — and told with the added bonus of stunning clothes in every frame of the film. But Bhandarkar, despite his impressive collection of fashion people and brands, fails to do either.