Namrata Zakaria

india-is-more-than-a-moment

Sat Jul 05 17:39:28 IST 2025

All of last week, our countless new fashion media companies and content creators have gone dizzy with delight broadcasting all the Indian references at Europe’s famous fashion week. The worshipped Italian label Prada presented its menswear show in Milan with models wearing Kolhapuri slippers. Louis Vuitton in Paris referenced so much of India, (Snakes and Ladders on the runway, Bijoy Jain as a model, and A.R. Rahman on the front row, with his music playing live) they should have just had their show at our Gateway. Ed Sheeran dropped a gorgeous new earworm in collaboration with our own rockstar Arijit Singh, and with superstar Shah Rukh Khan making a special appearance.

Has India arrived? Nope. Why? Because it never went anywhere anyway.

India has long been referenced by too many European fashion houses and luxury brands. Cartier famously made jewellery for Indian royals, much of which is still displayed in museums and celebrated as its most iconic pieces.

Christian Dior, Chanel (Karl Lagerfeld), Yves Saint Laurent and Dolce & Gabbana have referenced India in some collections. Louis Vuitton, under the great Indophile Yves Carcelle, commissioned dresses and scarves made from vintage Benarasi saris in 2010 designed by Marc Jacobs; I hold on to mine so sentimentally. Hermes launched a limited edition of silk saris for India in 2011. Christian Louboutin, another great lover of and consistent visitor to India, is often inspired by Indian designs in his collection, even collaborating with our very own Sabyasachi. And H&M had capsule collections across all its international stores first with Sabyasachi and then Anamika Khanna.

Our labels often showcase at international fashion weeks: Manish Arora was a regular two decades ago and a real toast to crazy kitschy India in Paris. He had opened his own store just off Rue St Honore, collaborated with Nespresso, Mac, and a whole host of big-ticket international brands then. Rahul Mishra and Gaurav Gupta are now seasoned Paris Fashion Week-ers, dressing international celebrities like Beyonce.

Last week alone, the fabulous young label Kartik Research showed its collection at the Paris Men’s Fashion Week. RKive and Countrymade, two young labels I discovered only last year, have showrooms in Paris. Lauren Sanchez carried an Indian purse (Ahikoza by Namrata Karad) to her wedding, Ed Sheeran just purchased a Jaipur Watch Company timepiece (founder Gaurav Mehta says it underscores “the potential for Indian design to resonate with international audiences”), Manish Malhotra dressed Beyonce and Gucci made a sari-gown-lehenga spritz for Alia Bhatt.

But what does this new focus on India, especially by Dior (with their splendid show in Mumbai in 2023), Prada and Louis Vuitton, signal?

That India is an important market. That India, the world’s largest democracy and fifth largest economy, needs to stand up and consider itself as a major market. That it cannot thump its chest in political chauvinism on the one hand, and ask for concessions and increase tariffs on the other.

If one discounts jewellery and watches, and bridal wear, India has no great numbers to speak of in the world of luxury fashion. If one further discounts Louis Vuitton, Hermes and maybe Dior, no other European luxury label has any numbers to boast of from India.

What does India look like to the western brand? A giant marketplace but with small potential. A difficult place to do business thanks to difficult and ad-hoc policies. A confused and contrarian consumer where western labels are concerned, but one that reveres its local brands.

Some good, some not. But a worthy country to tease and tantalise one more time.

X@namratazakaria

a-golden-run-to-a-silver-mile

Sat Jun 28 17:40:30 IST 2025

This is a very special year for me. Like Sabyasachi and the India Fashion Week, I am also celebrating 25 years in the business. For two and a half decades, week after week, uninterrupted (except of course when I was on annual leave), I have been writing a fashion column.

What makes it even more unusual is that the columns have appeared in mainstream news publications like The Indian Express, Mumbai Mirror, The Times of India and now here, at THE WEEK. It is so easy to write on fashion for fashion publications, print or digital. Try talking trends to hard-nosed newspaper editors, clueless about anything other than politics or municipal issues, and you’ll know. But I have been lucky for my golden run. I have been fortunate to be able to interview Valentino, Donna Karan and Salman Rushdie, and feature them on the front page of mainstream newspapers. I have been grateful to announce the arrival of Uniqlo, Starbucks and even Karan Johar’s babies on the revered page one. And yes, the column discussed, decoded and dissected why we wear what we wear, why what we wear tells others things about us. Fashion concerns all of us. We all wear clothes. And our clothes tell our stories.

A senior journalist who had started her career in magazines and then moved to newspapers asked me once whether it was a struggle for me to pitch to newspaper editors. My answer was no. Of course much of it has to do with the fact that I have been blessed to work with the most glorious editors this country has seen—the late Behram Contractor, the tireless Shekhar Gupta, the genius Meenal Baghel. All of them understood the power of good writing, regardless of the topic at hand.

But I would also like to take some credit here: for being so disciplined about my domain. When you take your work seriously, others will, too. You could be a crime reporter or a health reporter, but if your stories are not unique (news breaks) or interesting (good feature writing), no one cares. The current chief editor of The Indian Express, Rajkamal Jha, once announced in a meeting: “Any good story is a good feature story”. There was no difference between news and features—the front page, the opinion pages and the feature pages belonged to anyone who wanted them.

Fashion is so many things at once, it became the most amazing toolkit for me. It was a history lesson just understanding how the shapes and styles came to be. It became a lesson in marketing, why some brands did better than others. It was a love song to human hands, when we see the few thousand types of weaves and embroidery handmade in India alone. It was a homage to human enterprise—how our craft entrepreneurs, our fashion designers, turned their mom-and-pop shops into mega luxury brands simply selling Indian clothing to Indians.

People watching and hanging around malls taught me all I needed to know about retail. Fashion became an understanding of human behaviour, and how our clothes expressed our points of view. And yes, economics too. Did you know you cannot buy European shoes in India any more, thanks to our political relations with China? Go figure, but yes, fashion is also geopolitics then.

Fashion writing took me to Paris (nearly 10 years in a row for their fashion week) and Milan, but also new markets like Moscow (my current favourite), Croatia, Brazil, Dubai and even Pakistan.

In some ways I’m like the Gen-Z; I’ve understood a career is just something you are good at.

X@namratazakaria

chanel-and-patriarchal-india

Sat Jun 21 17:59:45 IST 2025

The bouquets keep coming for Leena Nair, the global CEO of Chanel. On June 11, the Indian-born Nair was awarded the UK’s Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Prince William, prince of Wales, in recognition of her work in retail.

Nair has been making news ever since she was appointed the chief executive of Chanel in 2021. Especially so because she has no background in fashion. Chanel is among the most valuable luxury brands in the world: it ranks among the top three fashion labels globally, alongside Hermes and Louis Vuitton, and much ahead of Dior, Gucci and Cartier.

Thanks to Chanel, it is now well-known that Nair, 56, has had a terrific career in the corporate world. She previously worked with Unilever as their chief human resource head for their global office spanning 190 countries, becoming the first female and first Asian to do so. We also know that she comes from a simple but hard-working roots. She was born to a Malayali family in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. She had completed her bachelor’s degree in electronics and telecommunication in Sangli, Maharashtra, and then wanted to study further.

Her parents were not happy with this request. Nair said at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in October last year that her father would “allow” her to do her postgraduate course at XLRI in Jamshedpur only if he could pick a groom for her when she turned 23. She was so excited to be able to study further, she agreed. On her 23rd birthday, her father reminded her of this and she was thus introduced to her now husband for an ‘arranged’ match.

When I watched this interview it disturbed me. What if Nair had said no to her father’s condition? Would Unilever not have had her as their HR head? Would India not be gloating about a hitherto unknown Indian woman as the Chanel CEO? In all probability, yes.

Nair, happily married with two sons, lucked out with her personal life. Her father’s choice worked out for her. But she had to pay the price for her assent—her free will.

Women have no agency in patriarchal India. Even the one who is hand-picked to run a global luxury behemoth was not allowed to pick her own husband. A 2018 survey shows that 93 per cent of marriages in India are arranged and only 3 per cent marry for love.

Occupying the front pages of newspapers these days is the story of a woman being investigated for commissioning the murder of her husband while on their honeymoon in Meghalaya. We are told that Sonam Raghuvanshi, 25, had apparently played a hand in the murder of her husband Raja Raghuvanshi, 30, as her parents didn’t approve of her choice of partner, a lower-caste employee of her father. Violence by a woman against a man is big news in India. But violence against a woman is normal; 33 women were murdered in India in 2021 in the name of ‘honour killings’. Globally, 140 women were murdered every day by a family member or a partner in 2023.

Chanel, meanwhile, has picked a remarkable Indian woman as its new global brand ambassador—Ananya Panday. The 26-year-old actor has not only swept all the awards last year, but is intelligent and independent and represents both traits in heaps. Especially when, at the age of 25, she bought herself her own little apartment.

India’s real icons must be women who have successful careers without any riders or guilt. That is when the nation can start celebrating them.

X@namratazakaria

the-king-of-coolth

Sat Jun 14 17:19:51 IST 2025

An hour into the Vijay Mallya-Raj Shamani podcast, I relived my days as a rookie lifestyle reporter again. Dr Vijay Mallya, or VJM as we called him, was India’s biggest and finest industrialist of his time. The other was Lakshmi Mittal, also incredibly wealthy and flashy, but we barely spotted him in India. These were also pre-social media days so if you had to be known then, you had to be seen in public and had to be read about in mainstream newspapers and lifestyle magazines.

Mallya occupied much space in both. His business successes ensured he was in the pink papers all the time. His father Vittal Mallya’s United Spirits was the largest spirits company in India, and the third largest in the world (after Diageo and Pernod Ricard). He acquired Berger Paints, Best and Crompton Engineering and several other companies to turn his inheritance into a conglomerate. His Kingfisher beer owned more than 50 per cent of the market share. His Kingfisher Airlines owned more than 25 per cent of the market share. He invested in The Asian Age, Cine Blitz, and Hi Blitz, a lifestyle magazine. He bought Tipu Sultan’s sword at an international auction. All of this assured him page-one status in almost every newspaper in the country.

He understood the importance of marketing early on, and decided that he would be the face of his businesses. In the podcast he says, “a brand must have a personality”. Since Mallya could not advertise alcohol in India, he decided to team his own image with surrogate advertising.

Mallya was the best and biggest party-thrower in the country. He launched the annual Kingfisher Calendar aping the Pirelli Calendar, with glamorous models in swimsuits and iconic fashion photography. His parties were major events, with Jay Z and Enrique Iglesias flown down (for his infamous 60th birthday in Goa, which newsrooms called his swan song after catching a whiff of the impending doom—in a few weeks he would leave for London for good).

He wore his wealth proudly, believing his successes to be the same as his nation’s successes. How else does an industrialist get to show off, after all? He was the only man in public to wear large diamond earrings then. He wore a lot of jewellery and owned a fleet of high-end cars—several Range Rovers, a Bentley and Ferraris. He also famously purchased Richard Burton’s yacht Kalizma.

He told me much of this over an interview I did for The Indian Express nearly two decades ago. He was warm and respectful every time I met him. I had visited his gorgeous sea-facing bungalow Niladri, at Nepean Sea Road, but his showpiece home was Kingfisher Villa in Goa’s Candolim, then a quiet snobbish beach away from the touristy Baga, now a city centre. Mallya’s Goa house, where he often hosted parties was a 12,300 sqft, three-acre paradise on the beach.

You can already see he provided the playbook for several other business families to follow. He really was the OG industrialist with a huge dash of coolth.

In the podcast, Mallya says he went through a trial by media and that’s certainly a lame cop-out. This is the same media that he courted, and was also a part of.

But was he a victim of his flashiness? Yes. It turned him into a poster-boy of bad loans. He admits to it in a 2016 interview with the Financial Times: “Maybe I should have never have gone down this route at all, in hindsight,” he says. “I am sometimes a victim of my own image. But I can’t do very much about it, can I?”

X@namratazakaria

the-transformation-of-alia-bhatt

Fri Jun 06 17:37:41 IST 2025

An unusual suspect saved the uber-glamorous Festival de Cannes red carpet from being a farcical circus filled with ridiculous clothes instead of world-class couture. And that saviour was Alia Bhatt. The actor is known for many things—her immense histrionic talent, her blockbusters, her growing popularity. But her fashion game? Sorry.

At Cannes, Bhatt was the guest of the chief sponsor L’Oreal, and wore four outstanding looks over her four days there. The first was an ivory Schiaparelli strapless gown, textured with florals and a ruffled hem. She wore her hair back into a slick bun, and delicate diamonds on her ears. The dress was elegant and she played it safe. The next day she stepped out in another fail-safe shimmering Armani gown, but she teamed it with a flapper girl headpiece that brought on old-Hollywood glamour to the look.

Bhatt’s third look is where we all did a double-take. Dressed in Gucci (she has been its global brand ambassador for two years now), Bhatt had Audrey Hepburn pinned on her moodboard. She wore a canary yellow sleek pencil skirt with a bustier and a cropped jacket. On her head was a printed scarf and chic catty sunglasses as if she had just stepped out of a hoodless Ferrari driving around the Italian countryside. This is what is called today as a fashion ‘serve’. In other words, she hit it out of the park.

And finally, a Swarovski laden see-through (not really) Gucci three-piece sari/lehenga/gown, that really, and finally, nailed ‘red-carpet slayer’ on her bio. Bhatt is finally a fashion queen.

You see, the actor has long struggled with her looks in Bollywood. She is most certainly a very pretty face. But the actor has been blessed with a petite, almost tiny, body.

She looked remarkable in her two mega first films: Student of the Year (2012) and Highway (2014), but she essayed teen characters in both. In her third, the excellent Udta Punjab (2016) for which she won her first best actress award, she played a drug-addled young girl again. But in Raazi (2018), she looked diminutive compared to the co-star, the six-footer Vicky Kaushal.

Bhatt has always looked like a little girl, even though she was such a big star. In an industry where a leading lady has to be sexy (I don’t make the rules), Bhatt didn’t know how to bring out the woman. Around her, the top league comprised of the beautiful, long-standing Deepika Padukone—towering literally and metaphorically over her; Katrina Kaif (tall and oomphy, albeit on her way to her own happily-ever-after); Kareena Kapoor (a leading lady of 25 years with no plans of retiring); Kriti Sanon and Kiara Advani (both with swathes of sex appeal).

Then, in 2023, Bhatt showed up in a blue fringe Alexandre Vauthier mini with plunging neckline for a private event in Mumbai. She looked fresh and confident, embracing her smallness as a new kind of aesthetic. More super-low necks followed, a cerulean strappy and neck-less Rosario mid-calf dress for the premiere of Animal (2023); a burgundy tailored plunge for Sabato De Sarno at Gucci, and a beauteous bejewelled bra-blouse for Sabyasachi’s 25th anniversary last January with a plain black Murshidabad silk sari. In Jigra, her widely panned film of 2024, her clothes stood out for me: she wore oversized shirts and trousers without the fear of drowning in them.

Bhatt has gone through a fleet of stylists: the very talented Ami Patel, Anaita Shroff and Lakshmi Lehr (who turned her into a vision at 2024’s Met Gala in a pastel Sabyasachi lehenga with a necklace for a headpiece), the faultless Priyanka Kapadia and now, the finest—Rhea Kapoor (the stylist for this year’s Cannes looks). Bhatt realised less makeup works best for her, and made her go-to makeup girl Puneet Saini show off her freckles.

Bhatt had found her groove, and it was being a tiny little dynamite.

@namratazakaria

not-a-flash-in-the-pan

Sat May 17 17:14:04 IST 2025

Every day I see so many young women on the social media handles of assorted paparazzi wearing next-to-nothings. There comes another Uorfi, I tell myself, reminding myself of Uorfi Javed who turned herself into a celebrity wearing risque, but DIY clothes. These lovely girls come from all over India hoping to kickstart a career allowing little peekaboos up their skirts or under their shirts. They usually don’t win the fame lottery, but who cares. I am all for women taking up space in any way they deem fit.

Several years ago, I wrote about the now-legendary Malaika Arora Khan (she was still a Khan then), who pranced about Bandra in a sports bra and knickers. She still does, but those days she sold newspapers every time she appeared (and thankfully she appeared daily). “In the good old days, newspapers would print a bikini-clad picture to offer its readers some eye candy. Today, they only have to print Malaika going about her daily routine, and while no one knows what she’s selling, everyone’s buying.” I wrote this in 2017. Today, Arora is a successful television hostess, wellness guru, yoga practitioner and entrepreneur.

While it may seem attention-seeking at first, and the Festival de Cannes’s no-nudity clause will agree, women wearing their underwear as outerwear have come a long way. They aren’t seeking anything today. They are only celebrating themselves. You don’t like to see women in trousers, or men’s clothing, you won’t. You want to see them in submissive flirty frocks, you won’t. Women and their itsy shorts are reclaiming public spaces. If you feel uncomfortable, you stay at home.

Just take one look at the photos of last week’s Met Gala, the world’s greatest fashion show. Singer Sabrina Carpenter showed up in a tuxedo jacket and stockings. Actor and singer Lisa wore sequinned undies with portraits on it. Actors Cynthia Erivo showed off her undies under a black Givenchy gown, while Taraji P. Henson wore a dress that ended just below her waist. Even new mum Hailey Bieber wore a jacket by Saint Laurent with just black stockings.

In 2022, the legendary Miuccia Prada sent out on the Miu Miu runway a mini skirt so tiny, it barely covered you. The little skirt became so popular it featured on the covers of half-a-dozen fashion magazines, becoming among the greatest fashion moments of our time. “The point is, you can choose what you wear,” Prada stated then. In the following years of the luxury slowdown, just a handful of brands showed an uptick, and among them was the defiant Miu Miu.

Women have worn their underwear in public before— Edie Sedgwick’s mesh stockings and knickers became among the most memorable images of the 1960s; Vivienne Westwood’s clothes have often flashed some too.

But what is this new wave of showing off your inners?

Is it to shock and awe? Perhaps, but naked pictures are such easy access thanks to the internet; they are such a snore now.

Is it to assert feminine/feminist energy? Possibly, here’s an in-your-face reminder that women hold up half the sky. And perhaps a finger in the face of the infamous president who wanted to grab crotches.

On the other hand, there is the small point about women’s strength, too. If one is to take cues from Malaika, then there’s no better showing off a gym-toned silhouette than showing as much of it as you legally can.

X@namratazakaria

the-met-gala-wanted-to-celebrate-black-identity-but-the-desis-made-it-their-own

Sat May 10 16:52:00 IST 2025

I adored the theme of the Met Gala this year. Cryptically called ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, I’ll admit the title required a footnote. Perhaps, if better explained, the many guests would not have come in mere black ensembles, and would have indulged in a little more peacockery.

The Met Gala—the gobsmacking, show-stealing, internet-breaking annual fundraiser—is hosted by Vogue magazine’s Anna Wintour to raise funds for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. The museum does a remarkable job of restoring and preserving costumes across centuries, with so many pieces so old they need to be permanently lying down or they may tear under their own weight.

‘Superfine’ is actually a cultural nod to the black dandies. Black Dandyism was a cultural movement in 18th century Europe where black men dressed stylishly and flamboyantly to assert themselves and their autonomy in a white world, especially during the Atlantic slave trade. The idea was to use fashion to destroy racial stereotypes, challenge class dynamics and bring dignity to the black identity. It’s amazing that this showcase took place in Donald Trump’s America; the new president is considered to be the most racist in recent times. It’s also amazing that he was blackballed from the event. Don’t we love fashion when it shows a spine?

But does fashion have a spine? I’m not so sure. European luxury labels are almost always headed by a white man. The African-American designers we know are Virgil Abloh (of the streetwear label Off-White, and then Louis Vuitton) and Kanye West (okay he is better known as a musician) and maybe Olivier Rousteing, but mainstream fashion has always kept the black man at bay.

Indian celebrities thronged to the Met Gala this year. The biggest surprise was Diljit Dosanjh. There were no murmurs of the brilliant singer-actor attending, but he showed up in all his Sikh magnificence. Dressed like Bhupinder Singh, the 20th century Maharaja of Patiala from Punjab, Dosanjh showed the real dandies were Indian royalty. The maharaja commissioned Cartier to make him an extravagant 1,000-carat diamond necklace (with the centrepiece being a large yellow 428-carat diamond)—the largest single order the jewellery house has seen till date. With permission from Cartier, Dosanjh commissioned Golecha’s Jewels to recreate a similar one for the Met. In an interview with The New York Times, Dosanjh says, “It’s all about carrying your identity with pride, right?”

Shah Rukh Khan attended as a guest of Sabyasachi Mukherjee and the two men played off each other to celebrate dandyism. Khan wore signature all-black and showed off his now-famous chest with multiple strings of Sabyasachi necklaces, many of them custom-made for him. In contrast, Sabyasachi wore white, and the two men appeared together signalling an equality in colours. Sabyasachi’s Parsi-style hat was a tip to Jamsetji Tata, who was famously not allowed entry to Bombay’s Watson’s Hotel, and so went on to build his own, the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

Cultural assertion and identity politics continued for Natasha Poonawalla, who wore Parsi Gara embroidery—considered heirloom pieces in her community—and tailored them to dandy styles. She wore her spectacular embroideries on a skirt, corset, cape, and collar, making her such a fashion queen on the red carpet.

Designer Manish Malhotra, who made Poonawalla’s outfit, was a feast for tired eyes in an embroidered sherwani-cape mix. Kiara Advani’s baby bump made its debut enrobed in a Gaurav Gupta gown and Isha Ambani looked so elegant in an Anamika Khanna caped outfit and a long choli with a stylish little hair accessory.

The gala may have wanted to celebrate black identity, but no one better than our desis to take a theme and make it their own.

X@namratazakaria

stanley-over-Stella

Sat Apr 19 14:06:22 IST 2025

Blame it on the heatwave or then just a clever marketing gimmick, but celebrities these days are carrying an unusual bottle out and about every day. Just about everybody—from Alia Bhatt and Ananya Panday to Rashmika Mandanna and Rasha Thadani—has been spotted carrying an oversize coffee cup (and they are not paid to promote it). The cup has replaced the day bag, the large leather tote like the ones seen by Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs or Stella McCartney. All the girls, and only the girls, want to carry this giant cup.

The cup is in fact a water bottle that has been all the rage all over the world for the last couple of years. Called the Stanley Cup, or the Stanley Quencher, it is simply a water tumbler that can carry 1.8 litres of water. Unlike a bottle, this tumbler lets you take larger sips, hence the Quencher.

The American brand Stanley gets its name from the first all-insulated vacuum bottle invented by William Stanley Jr in 1913. It was especially made for men who worked in labour jobs or then went camping and hiking. However, it took a bunch of women for the forgotten company to increase its sales by 275 per cent in 2021. All thanks to influencer marketing.

The influencer Ashlee LeSueur discovered the Quencher at a local store. It looked unwieldy to carry, but it was actually genius, as its slimmer bottom could fit in a car’s cup holder. When LeSueur realised it had increased her daily intake of water and was easy to carry around, she began to gift them to her friends and promote them on her website. In 2020, Terence Reilly, former CEO of Crocs, joined Stanley and engaged LeSueur to promote the Quencher via influencer marketing on TikTok. Soon, women began gifting each other Quenchers, taking its sales from $70 million in 2019 to $750 million in 2023.

While the Stanley can cost as much as $50 for a 1.8 litre cup, India has several local brands that have aped the Stanley design. I bought one for myself from House of Quirk on Amazon (which has half a dozen local brands copying the Stanley design) for as little as 01,500. It changed my hydration habits entirely. I could easily spend a full day outside home drinking enough water (a regular water bottle is 750ml). It was easy to carry thanks to the cup-style handle. And it kept hot water hot and cold water cold for nearly 12 hours.

In the last year alone, I have gifted four to my girlfriends and they have all loved it.

It’s also a fashion must-have. Almost every day I am asked, “Oh you got a Stanley?” Not only is the Quencher instantly recognisable, it has made Stanley a coveted and internationally renowned brand. “No, it’s an Indian brand from Amazon,” I reply. “And please get one, too.”

Of course I love the Quencher. But the real lessons here are for businesses. To start with, women are a smarter and more influential demographic than men, even if the product is created for men. Women will truly appreciate the design and value of your product, instead of buying just for prestige.

Secondly, do not diss the power of social media. Many companies prefer to speak to their customers in traditional modes like celebrity endorsements. But the virality social media can give your product is irreplaceable.

Finally, good design is instantly recognisable. The slimmer bottom is a game changer. Form must match function to create a hero item. Or is it the heroine?

X@namratazakaria

ring-through-the-wringer-column

Sat Apr 12 16:43:29 IST 2025

People in Mumbai woke up to an unusual advertisement earlier this week. It was a campaign from De Beers diamonds, urging men to buy diamonds for their daughters once they turned 16. “Others see you throwing a teenage tantrum; I see you standing your ground. They see you as stubborn; I see you as setting boundaries for yourself,” says the father. The advertisement had a caption that was an instant giveaway, “Love so natural only a natural diamond would do.”

A few weeks ago, Tata’s Zoya jewels started the fire. A video campaign for their new collection ‘Reborn’, directed by the Cannes Lion-winning Laurence Dunmore, showed a grown woman prancing on a beach, her dress billowing in the sea breeze. A voice said: “Some of us are born twice. The first time for the world. The second time for ourselves.” The campaign urged women to buy a solitaire for themselves, instead of waiting for a man to buy it for them. It essayed empowering ideas of resurgence and reinvention, which women often face once they reach 40 or 50. They often find themselves alone, but also richer. Either their children have left for universities, or their men have left. The women are in a space of rediscovery, and a diamond, a real diamond of course, must be purchased to celebrate this new life instead of curling up in self pity.

When did a diamond go from being a symbol of romantic love to being a sign of flying solo?

Wedding rings, always a western idea, began in ancient Rome and Greece and spread to the rest of the world with the spread of Christianity. They were historically a gold band, or any precious metal, and sometimes encrusted with precious stones.

In 1886, Tiffany founder Charles Lewis Tiffany introduced a ring with a Tiffany setting, which had a large diamond held up with six prongs. They marketed it as an engagement ring, or a promise of a marriage ring. The design was so simple and revolutionary, and priced so high, it became a must-have. Now, engagement rings and wedding rings are a worldwide cross-cultural tradition, signalling possibly the most successful marketing blitz known to global commerce.

Then women began to work, and all hell broke loose for patriarchy. Divorce rates kept soaring. Many women preferred staying single to getting married. Falling in love, and its ensuing trauma, turned into self love. A young filmmaker of Hindi movies tells me the hardest thing to do today is write a love story. Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee has publicly decried the lehenga to be dead, and the Indian wedding industry to be on the wane.

Wedding rings and engagement rings, symbols of love and infinity, became a stamp of ownership. Women didn’t want to be owned, they were finally free.

But another thing happened. Diamonds grown in laboratories were invented, and they were as good as the real thing. The lab grown diamond market size was $22.79 billion in 2023, and is estimated to be at $74.45 billion in 2032.

The real diamond business is now on a steep decline. The ICRA, a renowned credit rating agency, expects India’s cut and polished diamond trade to plummet to $12.5-13 billion, based on a contraction of 18-19 per cent in 2025.

Expectedly, women are supposed to save the day. Like many advertisers have realised, women, more financially independent than ever before, are now the target audience. Economic empowerment, changing gender roles and growing ideas of social justice have changed the consumer landscape. Women have emerged as a growing and key demographic.

Can the diamond, a symbol of eternity, be saved? Only the ladies hold the key.

X@namratazakaria

karan-johar-was-a-glorious-black-bird-in-flight-at-lakme-fashion

Sun Apr 06 10:47:00 IST 2025

A year ago, at my son’s school graduation ceremony, I was thrilled to find a young boy in his grade come on stage wearing a ponytail, makeup, and finely threaded eyebrows. I already knew the school, run by the inimitable Neerja Birla, had taken great strides in its mental health programme. It was also incredibly progressive in allowing for blurring gender behaviours and dressing. It had long allowed female students to choose pants over skirts as their uniform of choice, and male students to choose skirts over trousers if they wanted to.

I was especially thrilled because there had been no mention of this child before, neither by my son nor his friends. To them, he was just another child at school. He was a ‘regular’ kid.

As I watched the behind-the-scenes images of a fashion show Karan Johar recently shared, I was reminded of this child. The celebrated filmmaker walked the runway for designers Falguni and Shane Peacock at the recent Lakme Fashion Week X FDCI in Mumbai. Johar was so beautiful. He wore a sharp, black, fitted suit, with a sheer shirt, and diaphanous strips billowing in the wind. He wore his now-signature high heels (he has been wearing them publicly since 2019), rings, earrings, ear cuffs, and black nail paint. Johar was a glorious black bird in flight.

“We decided to layer the suit with a bit of fluidity, adding organza rose stems to the look. He also wore a transparent black beaded tie-up shirt. We suggested a little gothic look and added black nail paint,” Shane tells me later.

I don’t even know if he knows this, but Johar is responsible for so many young boys choosing to dress the way they want to, for them not feeling trapped by old and entrapping ideas of masculinity, where they struggle to breathe in their own skins.

Johar is telling our sons that they can just be. Telling them they can be as camp publicly as they want to be. That they don’t have to be in lavender marriages and pretend to love and procreate with women. That they can have their children without having wives. Johar is saving our sons. He is also saving our daughters.

If a hugely successful mainstream movie producer can be so ‘regular’, our children can also be as regular as they want to be. Johar is speaking about the most important issues to us and our children, without saying a word. This is the power of fashion, of clothing, and he has been using it to our great advantage.

One could argue that Ranveer Singh began the trend of gender-bending dressing in Bollywood, and they would be correct. Singh’s ponytails, vivid prints, nail paint, and lehengas remain pioneering. But Singh is such a masculine man and actor. He is the lusty Alauddin Khilji, crazy about other men’s wives. He is Simmba, who can lift a car and throw it on 20 goons. He is the oh-so-delicious Rocky, “all natural, no steroids”. And he is married to the country’s most beautiful female actor, Deepika Padukone.

In so many interviews, Johar has admitted to being teased in school for being too feminine or not conventionally macho. He said he was made fun of for being overweight, which led to body-image issues ever since. His recent weight loss (whether medically induced or natural, let’s give him his privacy) has been widely commented on. But it really is the reaction to a bullied child by a man who can finally afford to be himself.

Johar is the child we should have nurtured. And now he is nurturing our children.

X@namratazakaria