You've got male

Most journalists covering fashion have concluded that the recently held Van Heusen India Men’s Week (VHIMW) was a success. I feel that it failed on a very important count: there was, as is always the case, no real critique of what one saw on the ramp. Most articles on fashion weeks are full of silly praise and a rehash of the designers’ press releases. And, for this, I would blame the designers themselves.

As a community, fashion designers are extremely allergic to criticism of any kind. If anyone in the last 20 years of the industry dared to write or say anything remotely negative, the person has been subjected to much vilification and venom by the designer/s. The full-barrelled attack that a designer launches includes calling up the editor, owner of the publication/news channel, the owner’s uncle, the owner’s dog to complain bitterly about the antecedents and sinister motives of the hapless journalist. Twenty long years of this kind of suppressing criticism has meant that even the biggest duds have got great press and have now begun to believe in their own hype.

VHIMW threw up some great, some good, some middling and some terrible, terrible collections. We, as readers, however will only ever be told about the great collections and not the ones that need to be panned. It is time to lift the veil on this kind of hypocrisy for it doesn’t serve anyone well. The designer, falsely secure in the knowledge that he will never be judged objectively, more often than not puts out below-average creative work. The consumer, never confident in his own judgement, is conned into buying mediocre clothes and the journalist, who covers the fashion beat, is never taken seriously for he never exercises his power honestly.

For me, VHIMW worked at various levels. But one collection stood out for its inappropriateness. Shantanu-Nikhil, in my view, put out a collection which failed on several counts. The models emerged wearing often velvet red/maroon (the opening sequence was white) toga inspired ‘clothes’. While I won’t even get into the wearability argument against that collection, I was stunned by a complete inability to be creatively exciting. For you can only flout the wearability clause if you can tickle us with a thought process that is unique.

Manish Arora does it well when he puts out clothes that would require an honours degree in courage to wear on the streets of

Delhi. Rohit Bal, Arora’s one-time employer, does it even better when he sends out bare- chested men in hot pants on the ramp, unabashedly celebrating the sexual orientation of many of our designers. And it does take guts to send men out without clothes when your bread and butter depends on people wearing clothes.

The toga may be a trend that markets in the West are exploring right now, but even then, Shantanu-Nikhil missed the creative bus with this collection and really need to think long and hard when they start on their next men’s collection. In the meantime, I should book myself a one-way ticket to the moon as this column will surely get the two gents (no doubt wearing self-designed togas) exercised enough to call in the cavalry to try and decimate this columnist.

(archana.jahagirdar@bsmail.in)