Keeping the faith

The distraction wears red (against the wife’s greys),throughout the film as well as in her intimates. And she is played by Freida Pinto,an Indian born international arriviste,also called one of the most fashionable women in this country.

Reviews of Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger have deconstructed the great auteur of gloom as the film-maker trundles along,speaking of dreams and desires. Roy is a frustrated writer,married,who falls for his exotic neighbour. His wife Sally falls for her savant boss,also a married man but in an affaire du coeur with a painter. Sally’s father Alfie is having a delayed mid-life crisis,gyms away to a seizure,leaves his wife of 40 years and marries a prostitute,who,for her part,ends up sleeping with the gym coach.

But more than loving and cheating,the film is about the greatest of all human vices: to covet. Our human tendency to want something– anything– we don’t have is the premise of the multi-billion dollar fashion industry. The business is based on creating a yearning,which,if unfulfilled,makes us feel as if we are lesser mortals. As Yves Saint Laurent famously said,“Success in fashion is the ability to create desire.”

How many handbags can a woman need? A decade or so ago,it was one. When its leather began to crinkle or the seams began to rip,she went and bought a new one. But does anyone have less than six day-bags now? Not to mention the evening clutches in assorted colours,shapes and moods.

More than the production of beautiful clothes and accessories,fashion plays with our aspirations. There exists a team of marketing professionals in every big-ticket fashion house to swing you to believe their new dress will promise you a better life.

Rebecca Arnold’s Fashion,Desire and Anxiety is both a disturbing and provocative collection of photographs and articles from different designers and lens-men that bring to light the contradictory emotions of desire as well as the anxiety caused by desire.

At its worst,fashion inspires narcissism,low self-esteem and self-indulgence among us,and we happily go along with it,credit cards in hand. European labels like Hermes (1837),Burberry (1856),Louis Vuitton (1854) and their ilk cash in on their dotage by selling you a slice of their cultural heritage. Lately fashion is looking for a new marketing game. It’s trying to sell itself as an eco warrior,as a responsible user of resources. It’s also trying to show off its numbers.

And to anyone who thinks fashion was frivolous,the question is how come so many people fell for it? How do you explain its success? Because it is serious business. It generates great revenue,creates jobs,promotes skills,spends on advertising,is a source material for the publishing industry. And it influences society’s forward movement.

So what if fashion sells you an illusion while doing so. As Sally says to Roy about her mother’s dependence on a hoax fortune teller: “Sometimes illusions work better than medicine.”

PS: My tall dark stranger is Christian Dior’s New Lock sling. What’s yours?

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