Writing 2022 with a blade of grass

Cultural reporting in India must finally see fashion’s Old is New ruse for what it is and be brave, ask uncomfortable questions

The reasonable question, ‘so what’s happening in Indian fashion?’ makes my mind go blank. Whether it is from apologists of fashion who know what is happening but dangle a bait anyway or from satirists emphasising fashion’s irrelevance — even philosopher Slavoj Žižek did that last year in an interview — the question provokes perplexity. Because it means pushing back the procession of bridal lehengas looming in the mind to fluidly describe the experimental, original, risqué work that co-exists in fashion.

Notice the hubris? Lament the regressive tide increasingly apparent in art, culture and comedy, following the course of politics, and then switch right back to writing on all these issues, business as usual. Gripe about the pandemic’s ravages and fashion’s supposed non-essentialism in the face of climate change, then argue for its growing importance as an interlocutor of our times.