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Watching the Levi’s glamour show made me wonder why I was there.

Okay, I love wearing jeans, and somewhere deep inside one of my closets have the first pair (which of course don’t fit me anymore,) which I won as a prize for writing 500 words on why I love jeans. I had yet to own my first pair at that time, having just got married and still wearing saris like a bride should.

Jeans have walked in and out of my life through the years since the first one. I think there is something about an old pair of jeans that makes one believe one is completely comfortable with the world and oneself. No pressures.

Which is probably why I broke my own rule and went to check out Tarun Tahiliani’s show for Levis.

What I am going to say next, might sound like a bid to annihilate myself.

Tarun is a designer with immense influence in the industry. He has plenty of reach and push and whatever it needs to be visible and successful.

He is also one of India’s most talented designers. And I have seen him create some amazing clothes.

But the show he put up for Levis! If I were him, I would go away to a far off place, sit quietly by the edge of a deep blue pool and think over why I did what I did.

For the rest of the world that does not watch fashion shows, let me elaborate.

Tarun sent out a series of denim jeans, skirts, shorts, all structured and created by Levis to make legs look longer, butts look curvier, bodies look sexier… and he dressed them up as glamour wear.

Interesting idea, which the burgeoning generations of party hoppers and younger professionals were bound to just lap up. After all, how simple it would be to get out of one pair of jeans and don another, to change day wear into party wear!

But the dressing up! A child given strings of bulbs or crystals could have done what Tarun did. He strung up chains at the waist to hang over the hips, he added swinging strings of sparkle on hip pockets, patches of crystals of various dimensions at cuff, thigh, ankle… wherever fancy dictated.

All of it without a thought to how the wearer was supposed to sit without the stuff poking into the skin.

It went on with little respite, legs flashed past with enough sparkle on them to set the Queen’s Necklace into a sulk, but there was no element of design, no input that marked the mind of a master designer seriously at work.

And there was so much he could have done. The plethora of Indian crafts, threads, colours; the embellishments that could have set off the crystals as well as the denim; the add-ons that would create piquancy and glamour… well, if he had it all in his mind, it was not in evidence. I am not singling out Tarun, for this critique. This show was but one example of how commerce tarnishes art.

Playing to the gallery, or compromising on one’s sensibilities, or even just doing something hoping one’s image and name will carry the day, is not unknown in any creative field. Journalists write paeans of praise for celebrities hoping to enhance their own network, critics praise or kill to boost their importance and not because the subject demands that judgment, artists substitute gimmicks for inspiration, and even musicians and dancers are known to compromise on art for the sake of pleasing the power who holds the strings to important shows.But what no one seems to realise as the practice gains sanction and new followers, is that in the eyes of those who can see beyond, the loss of integrity, of faith is evident.

It will take many shows of great energy then to restore my lost faith in Tarun’s genius.
Like a film star or director or even a cricketer, a designer is as good as his last collection. I am waiting for Tarun to redeem himself. Will heave a sigh of relief when he does!

Email: ssaran@dnaindia.net