Monday, March 14, 2011

Passage to India

Another few pictures from my random collection of pretties.

Now the whole "India style" thing tends to get on my nerves. Burdastyle does it almost as often as they do "safari," and just as "safari" means tan clothes with pocket flaps and random epaulets, "Indian" means bright colors with some beads and sequins thrown on for good measure.

There seems to be no real attempt to tie the "Indian" fashion feature to actual Indian style; in fact, a lot of the clothes featured in those types of fashion spreads probably wouldn't be worn by many Indian women brought up in the culture that the fashion purports to represent. Go figure.

These photos, from an Azeem Khan fashion week collection of at least 5-6 years ago, don't bother me in the same way. First of all, what's shown here isn't being touted as "Indian" style. India-inspired, maybe, and that's fine. Fashion takes its inspiration from a lot of places, and actually what this feels like to me is some bizarre hybrid of 18th century Europe crossed with what we think of when someone says India.

Either way, Khan's embellishments, particularly on the jacket above, are gorgeous and qualify for keeping for that reason alone.

And yes, I do love the bright colors, and the sparkly bits. My mom called me a magpie growing up because I was always attracted to shiny things. That hasn't changed, and I have about as much use for these kinds of embellishments in my life now as I did when I was 10.

But I stand by my magpie taste: shiny is pretty. At least in this case.

1 comment:

Marie-Christine said...

I totally agree that Burda doesn't do exotic very well at all. But this is supposed to be the summer of bright colors, so we can wallow in that with abandon :-). You can keep the sequins, no problem.

I feel conflicted about the safari trip - the whole militaro-hunting aspect makes me puke, but I do like YSL and his attempts to make comfy practical clothes for women. So I compromise by khaki without bellows on the pockets, and especially without epaulets. Not entirely satisfactory.