If ever a couture week seemed at odds with the mood outside the venue, it was this year’s India Couture Week that started on 23 July in central Delhi.
On one hand was the event: 10-plus designers presenting their vision of couture—shorthand for bridalwear—at the Taj Palace Hotel. On the other was a city, and a country, consumed by Gen Z led protests over the NEET paper leak.
The distance between the two felt especially stark because for the first two days of India Couture Week, I was also on the ground at the protest site at Jantar Mantar, about 5km from the Taj Palace Hotel. I spoke to and observed students chanting slogans and making reels demanding accountability from the government. In the evenings, I was watching models walk in lehngas and sherwanis.
Moving between these two worlds within the span of a day produced a peculiar kind of cognitive dissonance. It is not unusual for journalists to shift between different worlds. During the covid-19 pandemic, many reporters spent their days documenting grief and uncertainty, only to return home and resume somewhat ordinary life. The ability to compartmentalise comes with the profession.
Yet this assignment felt different.
The two worlds
Maybe it was because my social media feed refused to separate the two realities. A reel showing a student distributing ORS packets at the protest site would be followed by a video of a model getting her make-up done. A protest slogan photo would give way to footage of actors closing a fashion show. Even conversations among journalists reflected the split attention. Between shows, we would ask one another whether anyone had been to the protest site or was planning to go.
Or maybe it was because the runway remained largely untouched by the political moment. To be fair, some designers did acknowledge the protests. Shane and Falguni Peacock, Masaba Gupta and Rimzim Dadu showed their support with social media posts before their respective shows. Tarun Tahiliani acknowledged the power of youth in his speech.
Yet once the lights dimmed and the music began, it was business as usual.
Fashion often reflects the society in which it exists. At different moments in history, it has served as a language of protest, identity and dissent. In 2017, Maria Grazia Chiuri sent models down the Paris runway in Dior T-shirts declaring, “We Should All Be Feminists”. For his Spring/Summer 2012 collection showcase in Delhi, Rajesh Pratap Singh covered models’ faces with masks as a statement against terrorism.
The impulse to use clothing as a political statement was visible at Jantar Mantar as well. I met an artist from Kolkata who had worked with a cobbler to create a tuxedo jacket, bow tie and trousers from cotton and newspapers. Slogans were stitched across the back. It was, he said, his “protest outfit”.
All this made the disconnect at India Couture Week harder to ignore. Fashion does not have to respond to every political event. Couture shows cannot be cancelled overnight; the garments represent months of labour by designers, artisans and craftspeople. Nor can one expect wedding wear to suddenly become a vehicle for protest slogans. Couture, by nature, deals in fantasy, aspiration and escape. But it does make one wonder: is fashion remaining in the realm of fantasy and preserving escapism, or protecting itself from questions that might burst the bubble it has created?
Either way, the outside world remains outside, underscoring the fact that two versions of India exist in parallel.