When Christmas Looks Like Christmas, Why Must Diwali Look Like a Funeral?
How fashion went from glamour to indifference. And how we managed to get the wrong end of the trend. There was a time when fashion advertising was about making you want to look at the clothes. The models were beautiful, the clothes were beautifully presented, and there was an unmistakable sense of occasion. Internationally, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington represented an ideal of beauty that was confident, glamorous and larger than life. India, too, had its own generation of supermodels: Mehr Jesia, Madhu Sapre, Noyonika Chatterjee, Sheetal Mallar, Shyamoli Verma and Ujjwala Raut. Each had a distinctive face, personality and presence. A model could be dramatic, playful, sensual, mischievous or even imperious. But she was rarely required to look as though she had just received some devastating personal news. Somewhere along the way, that changed. Today, increasingly, we are presented with models who look bored, disinterested, vaguely irritate...
