Supermodel Superstar

Celebrity is the strangest animal. Even though the average Mumbaikar runs into someone famous each time hes on a flight or lounging at a five-star lobby.

Written by Namrata Zakaria

October 13, 2010 12:42 AM IST

3 min read

Celebrity is the strangest animal. Even though the average Mumbaikar runs into someone famous each time hes on a flight or lounging at a five-star lobby,it wont stop him from pulling out his cell phone for a snapshot. Knowing fully well a reality show will earn you no more than 15 minutes in the spotlight,there are scores of wanna-shines lining up for them. And although actors are unilaterally the worst dressed professionals in this country,a runway show gives them a snob value their films dont.

The Couture Week that has been entertaining Mumbai and its supplements this week bears testimony that we are obsessed with cinema and celebrity. The feature pages are filled with ramp pictures of Amitabh Bachchan dancing with Shah Rukh and Hrithik (and upstaging Varun Bahls terrific,terrific clothes),and Aishwarya Rai dressed as a Goth princess (whats with those hideously smoky eyes?) and Abhay Deol shooting at sight and yes,Salman Khan with two armfuls of actresses. And this list isnt just half of it.

Of course fashion is fun and a little tamasha is enjoyed by all. But Im mourning the demise of the most wonderful thing in the fashion business: the supermodel. Not too many fashion weeks ago,models made news. The still-lovely Mehr Jessia was the penultimate model; her aloofness was much imitated. Anna Bredmeyer rocked the runway like a pole dancer in a sari. The Madhu Sapre-Milind Soman romance was far sexier then than the Saif-Kareena romance now. And Malaika Arora all of five feet and two inches filled our heads with naughty thoughts. Jessie Randhawa is a leopardess; Diandra Soares breaks every preconceived notion of beauty and forms a new one; Sheetal Mallar is liquid chocolate on stage and Bhawna Sharma teases the photographers with her almost-illegal pout.

But none of these beauties finds themselves being celebrated by either the industry or the fashion press. Now a model must hang herself off a fan (or partake of the reality-TV pie) to be interesting to editors.

In 1991,Linda Evangelista told Vogue magazine,We (Christy Turlington and her) dont wake up for less than ten thousand dollars a day. It became the most oft-quoted statement in fashion,signifying the ultra decadent lives of models and fashion designers.

But this was not always so. Just two years before Linda said this,runway models were paid up to 1000 dollars a show and treated like cattle. It was Gianni Versace and his celeb-mad sister Donatella who invented the supermodel phenomenon by bringing campaign models like Linda,Christy and Naomi Campbell to the runway. He began paying them up to 50,000 dollars per show,flew them in Concordes,put them up in big suites in five-star hotels and gave them bagfuls of free clothes. (His competitor Giorgio Armani was annoyed by this; he once fired Iman from his show because she took the attention away from his clothes).

While we gawk at our superstars in real-life,our models need to be treated a little super too. After all,we may like to see Katrina Kaif in the flesh but she wont make me want to buy the lehenga the way Indrani Dasgupta can. (namratanow@gmail.com)