FASHION: Bollywood Calling

Prithwish

The prominence of fashion designers can be traced from the days when Bollywood film and its stars became much more particular about clothes.

From an era when any hair-do or wearing any kind of clothes would get a pass mark, now Bollywood is eyeing big business not only in India but globally, employ designers who invest time and energy designing clothes which are not only according to the roles but also according to the time in which the script is set or which kind of socio-economic structure the film's aiming to highlight.

In this I guess we owe it to the west for refining our sensibilities about fashion.

Moreover for a designer, designing for a high-budget Bollywood film not only gives the designers the right kind of publicity but associations with filmstars and production companies also give designers constant media attention.

But such associations have also created a parallel rat-race -- of wooing celebrities -- among the small breed of people who are already engaged in a fight for survival.

Most fashion designers (except for the big names like Manish Arora, Rohit Bal, J.J. Valaya, Ritu Kumar, etc) now want a Bollywood celebrity to feature in their shows -- God knows why. Cos most of the media attention is taken by these celebrities and it is fashion which takes a beating in the end as news stories splash pictures of the celebrity and the designers' clothing line gets a two-line mention.

High time the designers take note of this and be proud of the fame they receive for their clothes and not the Bollywood stars they can rope in. What say?