Of Shocks and Context

At first sight, I reckon the jacket on the left is an unlikely candidate for being one of the most controversial garments of the 1990s, or for belonging to one of the most controversial collections of that decade. Sold on eBay a handful of years ago and photographed about as plainly as a piece of clothing can be, even the label wouldn't really give away much unless you happened to be (like me) a bit of a fashion geek. And nine out of ten people would probably think "what's the fuss?"The fuss in question might become slightly more apparent on seeing the picture below- the good garment in question takes its provenance from none other than Jean-Paul Gaultier's A/W 1993 collection, famously known as the Hasidic collection.

Contrary to what many people might think, it wasn't the act of putting clothes modelled on those of orthodox Jewish people on the runway that raised people's hackles- it was the fact that the clothes - traditionally worn by men- were being modelled by women. (women including Naomi Campbell, Nadja Auermann, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista, among others). And given that cross-dressing is taboo to Hasidic Jews, it was considered a sacrilege that Jean-Paul Gaultier had encouraged exactly that. Hence, the furore.

On some level, mindless cultural appropriation by fashion (see: every time the so-called "tribal" or "ethnic" look swings around on a runway, or even keffiyehs a few years ago) makes me uncomfortable, partly because of the blind one-dimensional idiocy it's done with (both by designers and wearers- see: keffiyeh) and partly because of the connotations of someone's heritage and the aesthetics associated with it being a "trend"- which also means that it can be demode six months later. But this collection doesn't fall prey to that particular trap- the almost commonplace look of the clothes when considered individually (like the jacket in the topmost photograph) is a good lesson in how anything, in the right context, can be exotic or shocking- even the relatively familiar.

pictures from eBay, TFS and the New York Times.

My (World) Cup Runneth Over

Sports, as I have said before, has never been my bag of chips- but in honour of the World Cup finally kicking off today, I do rather fancy (in my dreams) wearing these, courtesy Comme des Garçons SS09 : They're hardly standard WAG-wear and might be likely to get me kicked by an enterprising football hooligan who mistakes me for an old-school ball (not the more aerodynamic FIFA model), but given that the chance for these to be entirely occasion-appropriate hardly ever comes along, I'd say carpe diem.

Spot The Sock

Does anyone else see what I do, i.e. a clear resemblance between what Stella Tennant is wearing in this W editorial from September 1995:

and these (below):

Prada A/W 2010-11

It's not as if socks or tights worn with heels are anything new (the aforeshown editorial shot proves that), but something about the insistence that they are indeed new and a 'trend' puzzles me. Unless it's fashion exhibiting one of its classic traits- the approximate memory/attention span of a goldfish*- yet again. Besides, the Prada legwear and shoes look much too similar to the Stephane Kélian shoes and Holland & Holland shooting socks on Stella for me to pass up making this post.

*note on its history in the early 00s: There are ElleGirl editorials dating from 2004-05 and a runway trend page from the April 2004 issue of Vogue UK open in front of me right now showcasing this particular styling permutation. I think the look started showing up on streetstyle blogs a lot c. 2007 and 2008, but my pedantic side needs to state that it did exist before that .

image 1 from The Fashion Spot, image 2 and 3 from style.com

Shaolin Soccer

In the regular course of things, I'm not a sports fan- the things that get called sports that I like, are things I simply don't think of as sport because in my head, they're too pretty (e.g. figure skating, gymnastics and the equestrian events at the Olympics). One major exception to that, though, is football- specifically World Cup football, or soccer as Americans like to call it.

And given that one of my favourite films of all time is a rather unorthodox football fantasy, and we are thisclose to the next World Cup, I thought this was probably the perfect time for me to talk about it here. Ladies, gentlemen and disgruntled blog-readers who are sick of me, I now present: Shaolin Soccer. (I'll let the 'soccer' bit slide for now, since Shaolin Football sounds so much less alliterative and sibilant).

The story is a fairly simple one, really: a former star football player who sold out by throwing a match attempts to turn a family of down-on-their-luck, reluctant (ok, all but one of them are reluctant) Shaolin experts into a prizewinning football team. Sounds clear enough, eh?
The genius, though, lies in the fact that Shaolin Soccer is- as its name indicates- more Shaolin and less soccer. It's a kung fu comedy through and through, quite cheerfully crude and silly in places (any Stephen Chow fan should probably know to expect that out of his films), but it doesn't lack its moments of seriousness, particularly in some scenes involving the team's coach or the love interest played by Vicki Zhao, who is an absolutely awesome character in her own right.

more Shaolin and less soccer (above and below). See what I mean?

On reflection, it's much more than plain old martial arts slapstick- at its heart, it really is a story about the characters (especially Sing, played by Stephen Chow)- about the brothers and how they repair their own fractured relationship, the coach and his attempt to redeem his past mistakes, and the fact that every single one of the protagonists is an outcast from society in a major way and the game is a chance for them (especially Sing) to get people to respect their way of life. The other thing I really love about the movie is the fact that, for lack of a better term, it's absolutely 100%. No half-assed attempts to be ironically clever- it owns its silliness, and is, in spirit, a lot like another old favourite of mine: Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.

Classic trope for an epic scene (good guy strides in in slow motion to join a do-or-die mission with his long coat fluttering behind him in the wind), done Shaolin Soccer-style as shown above (the man is in his undershirt and boxers, and what flutters in the wind is a bathrobe). I couldn't not include these stills- goalie Empty Hand dressed like Bruce Lee in Game of Death!Below is a still from one of my favourite of the matches shown in the movie, featuring a cross-dressing Cecilia Cheung and Karen Mok and some fantastic acrobatics. I can't say more about why it's my favourite without giving out spoilers, but I will say it has something to do with their facial expressions and the goalkeeper in the two stills above.
And there were moments- quite a lot for a comedy, really, especially where the good guys are playing a football team that is actually named Team Evil- when I looked like the good coach in the above still, minus the yellow jacket.

*screenshots taken by me, everything else from metacafe.

A Portrait Of One Great Artist By Another

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Matisse and his Doves (1944)

On Skin Tones and Looking "Indian"

Vogue India, let me be blunt, has never been one of my favourite magazines- a cluttered layout and frequently-boring covers/editorials being two of the main reasons. When they do place models on the cover (in place of their usual choice of a vapid Bollywood starlet with an accompanying gushy puff piece inside), it does tend to be a bit of an event- and more so here, since the April 2010 cover intends to 'celebrate' skin tones that aren't on the fairer side of the colour spectrum here in India. I have a fair bit to say about this- firstly about the cover itself and what it's trying to do, and secondly about the reactions it seems to have provoked from news outlets outside the country. Look away if you don't want to read me getting bitter and angry, please.

First off: fair skin is a part of the beauty standard in India*- and in most of South Asia too. Being dark-skinned, even among people and communities who tend to be just that, isn't for the most part considered attractive. If one can't be fair, the ideal is to be as fair as possible- or at least to ensure that one can't be described as 'dark'. It's acceptable to be described as 'wheatish' (a common euphemism for "not that dark-skinned, but not fair either"), but being dark-skinned- any shade of dark-skinned- is automatically= ugly. Note: if your features are otherwise conventionally dead gorgeous but you happen to be somewhat dark, then you might be lucky enough to be stereotyped as 'sexy'/'sultry'/ fill in the blank with some cliché about dark-skinned women and their purported hotness/sex appeal.

Case in point: the cover above. The models are a fair bit darker than Vogue's average choice of cover girl, and some of them (Nethra Raghuraman, far left, and Tinu Verghese, the bleach-blonde one) have been successful models for a decade or more. In my eyes, they're not really dark, but they're hardly considered fair-skinned by an average Indian newsstand buyer either. So some part of me doesn't really get the self-congratulatory patting on the back, with the coverline The Dawn of Dusk, accompanied by pictures of dark-skinned models in bikinis. Sure, they look great, it's April and it's hot here- but frankly, I'm tempted to yawn very widely at yet another reminder of the only way in which us dark women are considered attractive (ie if we're half-naked or close). And I find it mildly funny that they're all the same approximate shade of brown/tan, but nothing's perfect, I suppose. If I had to sum it up, I'd say the cover celebrates tanned Indian women- who are, by the way, considered 'dark' out here.

The cover itself inspires nothing but very mild irritation in me, but my second major beef is with the number of reactions across the Internet, mainly in the comments section of places like NYMag and Jezebel, claiming that the cover models don't look "Indian". Some of the reasons cited are that they look more like "tan Europeans"**, that all the Indian people the commenter knows are darker than that, and that the models look "nowhere near 'dark' by Indian standards", that they look "western and light skinned", that "each one could pass for Spanish or Portugese" and so on.

See, here's the thing. I'm used to people making ignorant, clichéd statements about India online, even ones that are meant to be complimentary (about colours, textiles, food, blah blah). But who on earth is some random commenter (not living in India) to pontificate about what does or doesn't look Indian? Does anyone have any idea of how offensive it is to hear this?

The cover shows up a small, imperfectly represented sample of Indian women- just because their faces don't fit someone's preconceived notions about what an Indian female looks like, doesn't mean that they can't look like they came from India. It's a country of 1.2 billion people spanning a large geographical area that contains people of a massive range of colours who look like they could belong to several different races. That diversity isn't anywhere near being well-represented in popular culture, but that doesn't give people the right to negate my- or anyone else's- heritage on the basis of our appearance. I mean, excuse me for my face and skin colour not fitting into your stereotyped notion of what people from the same area of the world as me, should look like.

* and seems to have been for millennia- this one did not originate with the colonial era.

**Really? Somehow, I doubt that.

This Is Not An April Fool's Day Joke

*WARNING*: Harry Potter geekery ahead.

I feel like an ancient decrepit broken record just saying this, but I love Harry Potter to bits. The only thing that ever really grieved me about the books (apart from the deaths, and Harry's sad childhood) was the cover art on the UK editions. Apart from the art for the first book, none of them really did justice to the story inside- they looked far too childish for a story that was rapidly becoming anything but.

Which is why the news that Bloomsbury is republishing the Harry Potter paperbacks with brand new covers (above and below) to, in their words, "appeal to the next generation of readers who did not 'grow up' with Harry Potter and who have not yet experienced the thrill of life at Hogwarts"* makes me feel simultaneously very old and very excited. Old because I practically grew up with Harry Potter, which ran in tandem with my own school life as far as Book 4- in fact, the end of Book 7 felt like the true end of my adolescence - and thrilled because, well, the covers look absolutely gorgeous. Clare Melinsky's linocut illustrations are not only beautiful, with not a line out of place, they've also managed to capture the most crucial moments of each story in a way that almost makes me want to cry about why these couldn't have been the first-edition covers for the books. If there are any Harry Potter fangirls reading this, I suggest clicking on the pictures to see them full-sized (the actual books won't be on sale till November 1st of this year though) . Especially the last one. It feels so final, in a way the current cover for Deathly Hallows just doesn't.
* That's what they say. I'm just glad someone at Bloomsbury decided that the current covers suck enough to need replacing.

images from www.mugglenet.com