In poor taste

This is a buzz that has been slowly building, starting with a tiny mushroom cloud of objection in India and growing to a louder noise overseas. Vogue India, which launched a year ago with a great deal of fanfare and many large expectations, has given itself a good helping of egg on its own face. How? Simply by publishing fashion photographs that, while gorgeous as images, are in crashing bad taste as far as the concept and sensibility is concerned. Some people consider it no really big deal - to show the rural poor ornamented (that is really the only word that seems right here) with accessories that only the urban very rich can consider acquiring seems most inappropriate and the kind of statement that would make almost anyone with any sensitivity screw up their noses (well-bred, urban, rich and otherwise) with a certain touch of delicate disgust. It certainly made my schnoz lift a little higher and crinkle a bit. If I had been at home when I first saw the fashion spread that was published, I may have been have been rather more vocal in my feelings about it.

It is not that the pictures were not fabulous; like almost every image I have ever seen in Vogue from anywhere in the world, they were. Stunning. But, when you think about the huge gulf between the haves and the have-nots, the spread was singularly insensitive, never mind that the editor (a lovely woman I slightly know) justified it by saying that everyone everywhere enjoys beauty, never mind which economic stratum they belong to. The people in the photos may have been well recompensed for their smiles and pride in wearing (a Fendi bib on a child) or using (a Burberry umbrella carried by a gnarled old man) products that they would probably never have access to under normal circumstances. But they would obviously have to return them at the end of the shoot, and any damage caused inadvertantly to the objects would have been paid for in some degree of angry outburst or nasty sniping. The whole thing smacked painfully of a patronising attitude and a lack of any consideration for the people and their reality. The international media has been severe in its criticism of the spread. The Indian media has jumped on the castigation bandwagon with a certain relish that is often the lot of those who have what is envied. I waited to find out what the whole story was before I decided to write this. In the meanwhile, this noise has faded somewhat and the next has probably been fuelled by something else that someone else did.

But there is another aspect to the whole thing, the one that has made me write this, in fact. As a wonderful and wise gentleman pointed out to me. India is one of the world's largest hubs for the recycling business. Everything from old computers to clothes to ships to food finds a market here. It is mended, refurbished and resold, more than enough of a business for many to find their livelihood in it. It may well be that the Fendi bib and the Burberry umbrella find a home here, with these same people who could never think of buying it, at some stage in the life of the object. And they would probably carry it or wear it or use it with the same pride that their beaming faces showed in the pictures that have generated so much controversy.