What Not to Watch

The episode I watched had a much touched up Trinny: plumped up lips,tight,shiny skin and heavily mascara’d eyes,wearing a beige gold lame jacket,while Susannah was in a silky crepe blue dress and heels. The two were traipsing around Marine Drive on what appeared to be a swelteringly hot day,looking for a candidate to makeover. They found their target — a 29-year-old vivacious teacher-trainer,dressed in a long black kurta paired with badly-fitted jeans and shabby shoes,who looked confused but perfectly happy to submit to some grooming. After some poking and prodding,they advised her on the right inner wear,which was,of course,bleeped out by our overzealous censor board. Breast,unless it’s got cancer right after,is not a word for a family channel.

After some animated discussions on hotting up the teacher (“sexy” is Trinny and Susannah’s favourite word) the teacher-trainer first emerged from the dressing room in a shiny white frock that was absolutely horrific. Then Susannah put her in a shocking pink dress with royal blue heels,more suited to a night out. I was trying to imagine the girl negotiating a Mumbai local in that dress and heels. Maybe,Trinny and Susannah or the producers of the show don’t know,teachers even in the most progressive schools in Delhi and Mumbai have an unspecified but widely followed dress code of saris and salwar-kameezes.

Style has a cultural context,especially in India,where we’re encountering people of widely different social and economic backgrounds every day. Unless you want your attire to be a talking point,or you’re working in a fashion magazine,it’s probably more appropriate to blend in rather than stand out. Not to suggest that your appearance should be sloppy but a shocking pink dress for training teachers in an NGO in Mumbai is probably not the right outfit. Trinny and Susannah’s make-up and clothes tips seem very dated and fussy,and totally out of tune with our environment. The other girl they made over in the same episode went from being young and fresh faced to looking like an overdressed and over made-up 35-year-old.

The current czar of the make up world,Bobbi Brown,keeps emphasising in all her interviews make up should be natural and used to enhance your existing features,not to look like someone else. If you can “see” it,it’s too much. And the one thing that’s inherently cool about Mumbai girls is that they don’t slather on foundation and look like clones of each other like they do in Delhi. But now that Trinny and Susannah are on a mission to change that,who knows?