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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Sari, I am English
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Sari, I am English

Television anchor Sagarika Ghose says her saris define her fusion personality

TV anchor Sagarika Ghose favours the sari. Photo: Priyanka Parashar/MintPremium
TV anchor Sagarika Ghose favours the sari. Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint

She is in a Raw Mango phase, you could say of television anchor Sagarika Ghose, if you track her dressing style. Pop lipsticks, neat shoulder-length hair and Chanderi saris in colours as assertive as her opinions—that’s Ghose. Her attitude and manner have been a constant down the years. The rest—her saris and such—an eye-catching riot.

The modern, fluid Raw Mango Chanderis that she currently favours have played musical chairs with her winter Kanjeevarams and summer Leheriyas and won the round. At least for now. The blouses, as always, are bursts of vivid mix and match. “I am a Raw Mango addict," says Ghose, laughing aloud. “Fashion and me are a clash of civilizations," she adds, deftly manoeuvring fashion out of the debate to make space for individual style.

For someone who dismisses all fashion consciousness, her colour combinations (an oxblood blouse with a yellow and purple sari, for instance) are certainly fashion forward.

Ghose also knows that her on-camera style challenges stereotypes. “I think and speak in English and voice opinions that may make people uncomfortable. To some people I may seem like an elite babe in traditional saris with shocking sleeveless blouses, and trying to subvert a power equation. But this fusion is precious to me. I believe in shock value. This is who I am," she says.

Designer Sanjay Garg of Raw Mango says he finds such “phases" of some of his clients both amusing and revealing. “When women find their attitudes mirrored in a product, they can’t stop buying for a while. Especially handloom saris because they don’t expect such weaves to be contemporary," he says.

Seven years ago, when CNN-IBN was launched, Ghose, now its deputy editor and anchor of the popular prime-time show Face the Nation, says her desire to wear saris on TV met with resistance from the channel’s stylists. Anchors were expected to wear formal Western ensembles, lest Indian clothes made them look unsuitable for the channel’s brand statement. “But I don’t favour the coat and spaghetti syndrome. Why can’t I wear a sari as an English broadcaster? That’s my statement," says Ghose, who argued her case and won it.

“I go by her love for the sari, as audiences relate to her like that. Other anchors are not encouraged to wear Indian clothes," agrees Priyanka Singh, stylist for CNN-IBN for the last seven years.

More than considerations of a Western look well matched with English broadcasting, it’s about keeping out poorly coordinated ethnic clothes, especially when there are two anchors, explains Singh. She believes it isn’t easy to make Indian wear look professional. While we discuss the sari’s English personality on Indian TV, we forget even an obligatory mention of the Doordarshan days when news anchors, even the English broadcasters, only wore saris. It’s been censored from active memory.

Ghose’s traditional-edgy style is much thought through, says Singh, who accompanies Ghose on some of her shopping trips. From the absence of necklaces, the preference for large, visible ear studs, the orange matte lipstick or the conscious mix of Leheriyas with buzzy brocades—no detail is too small.

Ghose, who says she makes sure she doesn’t look like an aunty or mummy, is candid about her large wardrobe that is updated often. “A few hundred saris, yes," she confesses, with an unedited hahaha. More than 14 new Raw Mango saris; 25-odd chiffon Leheriyas, a dozen-plus light Kanjeevarams and many, many others.

English, saris. Nice, no?

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Published: 09 Mar 2013, 12:07 AM IST
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