Wot couture?

Wendell Rodricks the fashion designer decodes high style at the Oscars, and explains why Rahman would've looked better in a lungi on the red carpet.

Wot couture?

Wendell Rodricks the fashion designer decodes high style at the Oscars, and explains why Rahman would've looked better in a lungi on the red carpet.

NOW that the Oscars are done with, India should rejoice wildly. I was teary when Rahman won. Twice! And when those kids lined up for best film on the stage, I wept. In three hours, the Oscars did for Mumbai and India what a five-year budget of Incredible India ads could never achieve. The bomb blasts are erased from memory and foreigners are lining up to take that plane to amchi Mumbai. I can also see slum tours becoming the rage.

Freida Pinto

Indiya is the new flavah honey! Manolos and Tod's will swish on slime in Dharavi very soon and hopefully Indian charitable NGOs will get fat with Texan dollars. I can imagine a Dallas heiress drawl: "Honey we just gotta give some millions to those adorable slum kids!"

Yippee! Joy all around. In India and a world where recession is elevated by hope, built on smiling slum kids.

Then, Smile Pinki won! Open the champagne, the charity purses and the feel good, new India.

Not because of Slumdog Millionaire, but seriously this year the Oscars was the best choreographed and produced. Those line-ups of five top stars and directors was thespian splendour at its best. Full paisa vasool.

Ok... so applause, applause, applause.

The Oscars are invariably about couture. Valentino, Armani, Marc Jacobs, Dior, blah, blah, blah. Women wading in acres of silk and sequin. Men looking like penguins. Year after year. Joining them was Anil Kapoor. And who, pray tell, put our Mumbaikar kids in those western clothes? What? Indian clothes we have not? Shame, shame.

Kudos to Loveleen Tandan and Resul Pookutty who went Indian and shone like Oscar gold. That Rahman chose to wear Indian was a mixed bag as he too fell for Italian couture in parts of the party. Ideally a nice Tamilian lungi edged in pure gold worn with a sherwani would have hit the spot.

Sophia Loren was dressed like a saloon girl in a cheap spaghetti Western. With that sublime face and surgically superb body, it was a pity she wore frill, flounce and hand-on-hips like a 70's model. Dahling Loren, stay with the austere Armani next time. Or come to India and check out our local talent.

How come some stars always, always, always get it right? Halle Berry. Gwyneth (she was in Jaipur two weeks ago and seriously eclipsed by the stunning Aishwarya Rai who I was styling for Longines. A true star Miss Rai!).

Anne Hathaway was by far supreme. Add Angelina to the list. Who dresses these girls?u00a0 It's all up to the stylist.

Our beauteous Freida Pinto looked radiant in her Galliano, though she may have left the Indian designers in a sulk. Whatever she wears, this nice, grounded Catholic girl from Malad will always have my blessing.

I would love to see true Indian clothes on the red carpet and not the standard set by Hollywood. After all, Bollywood is set to take on the world. So let's show off our sarees, salwars, lungis and sherwanis.

Halt!

What are those dancers around Rahman wearing? Falooda pink lycra, kamasutra hair, nice abs but shudderingly bad getups that must leave even Manish Malhotra cringing. What do we call these clothes?

This at a time when Bollywood has its biggest chance to enter into the world stage with supreme cultural splendour.

Can Marthand Singh please be put in charge of all future Indian styling? We want to see nice weaves, historic dyes, sublime embroidery, and understated Indian chic. So many great artisans and designers and we resort always to aping the Western red carpet. Constantly adding to the cliche that India is about a line up of chorus girls in lycra, heaving their bosoms. We all know what a choli, exposed midriff, metres of gajra and no dupatta is representative of. Even an acclaimed courtesan or dancing girl would have more taste than what we saw. Rani pink is not even a truly Indian colour; no matter what Diana Vreeland may say.

Apart from the dancers, midway through Rahman's song, two Mumbai taxis appeared as backup singers. Taxi yellow kurtis and black leggings. Ouch!... Twinkling away in the Oscar arc lights. Mid-calf length leggings? They went out with Madonna in 1984. The guys at Dupont (who make lycra) must be rejoicing to see an ancient culture voraciously feed on their wonder yarn.

There are some things that are culturally repressive. This was one of those moments.

Bollywood is on the brink of greatness. And imaging is a big part of it. Next time around, please invest in a bigger budget and some time in researching our grand 6,000-year clothing heritage. Let us depart from these cliches on and off the red carpet. It may end up as the only way the West views our wondrous clothing legacy.

So what were these girls wearing? Hot Couture. Haute Indian couture? A friend called and whispered, "Wh*re Couture!"

Point heard.

Now let's go back to the party and indulge in the bubbly... sorry, feni!

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