Vogue India’s High-Low Mix

Today has brought forth fiery criticism—on Jezebel and elsewhere—of a Vogue India fashion story from the August 2008 issue (the one with the aging Indian woman carrying the Fendi-bibbed toddler) that’s quickly being tossed into the pile of “Vogue’s worst mistakes EVER,” right on top of American Vogue’s April 2008 LeBron cover.

It'd be easy to cite cases of any of the 18 editions of Vogue worldwide not understanding poverty or real people. But it’s also important, in my opinion, to not think of Vogue as some mystical entity, some Adam Smith-meets-blunt bob invisible hand that swoops in, red pencil in tow, to dictate Fashion. With all respect to Dodai, who posted on the topic this morning and noted that this is basically all you can expect from Vogue, Vogue India is run by Priya Tanna, and so in this case we need to leave Anna and her misdeeds out of it and stop thinking of this as part two of Voguegate 2008. Tanna at least deserves her own pile.

Right off the bat, it’s natural to want to turn this into a straight-up pity party as many have and call upon facts and figures that speak to the unspeakable paucity of most of the Indian population: 456 million live on $1.25 a day. This is a depressing stat, sure, but it hardly addresses the relevance or value of this fashion shoot, which exists in a country that lives with those facts and figures every single day (and the one that states the country will have 100 billionaires by 2009), not just when the info makes it into the NYT World Business section.

See, the thing is, when you look at the pictures—really look at them and don’t just instantly lash out at the easy target, the fancy fashion magazine—you can read a deeper message. First off, the juxtaposition of the $200 Burberry umbrella and the man who would have to work 160 days to make that amount of money speaks to India’s current socioeconomic sprawl. The fact of the matter is that there are people in the country that have the means to fritter away money on purses and sunglasses even if half a billion have trouble getting their hands on sustenance, hence the market for this magazine to begin with. There’s a mall opening in Delhi later this month, DLF Emporio, that will play host to all the big guns: Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany’s. Seeing the trappings of thick-walleted India literally on top of those people who are representatives of the have-nots—and ones with faces and visibly missing teeth—is a strong statement, one that is not so much awful as it is real.

Outcriers have pointed out that the subjects of these photos have not been named and are thus not treated as people. From a Telegraph article:

“‘The poor are always used as props, not as real people, which is why they haven't even been named in the magazine,’ said columnist Parsa Venkateshwar Rao.”

While attributing names to faces (and, moreover, adding stories and locations) would bring something to the table, this kind of treatment is rare in the fashion world on the whole, right? How many fashion editorials are published without running the names of the models (much to their dismay)? How many unnamed portraits are posted on The Sartorialist under headers like “On the street…West Village?” In this case, IDing the grinning woman with the Etro bag or the lady with the baby would actually be belittling them—treating them as only sob stories and not people just as worthy of a camera’s lens as some skinny-jeaned Parisian guy.

And—when you really look at the pictures—you can’t help but get caught up in how f-ing pretty they are. They aren’t just captivating in a National Geographic, people-caught-in-a-moment way, either. They are inspiring as a fashion portfolio. The colors and patterns are rich and poppy. That kid with the Fendi bib? He’s also wearing a floppy, striped knit hat and intricately decorated shoes (both the model’s own, presumably). While the focus here is obviously intended to be on the over-the-top luxury accessories, the very accessible underpinnings ($1.25 a day, people) can hardly be overlooked. And so for one of the rare times we experience—in a fashion magazine—real clothes that real people wear. The editors of Jezebel and its commentors spend a lot of time and energy bashing the 4 Times Square minions and the Elle glambots for only ever showing ultra-thin models, and then as soon as we get bodies that are hungry not from Kleenex diets but from genuine lacking, we balk at that too.

Imagine what these photos would look like if you’d never sweated a Marc Jacobs dress. If you had no experience with LVMH and big-budget branding, the plaid umbrella here would just be an umbrella: It’d be identified for its form and function as opposed to its bold-faced purveyor. You have to know what Hermes is to even be offended by its presence, and that’s kind of amazing too.

The point is, there are a lot of things to think about this story once you get past the initial instinct toward revulsion. Unlike Elle features that claim to show accessible fashion, pairing one lone H&M T-shirt with YSL shoes, $300 jeans, and price-upon-request vintage leather jacket, this story actually showcases the fact that fashion can come from the street—and not just Robertson Blvd. or West Broadway.

The truly disappointing thing to me, though, is that Tanna, the Vogue India editor who’s had to speak to this backlash, doesn’t even get it. She doesn’t understand the messages these pictures send and the power they have, whether they want it or not. From today’s New York Times story:

"'You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously,' Ms. Tanna said. 'We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world,' she said."

Well, why not go ahead and make a statement when you have the floor?