“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
– Steve Jobs.
When we talk about an evolution in taste, it is assumed that you have somehow become better … fixed the shortcomings … have reached a better place now than when we got started. Evolved. Is that true of style ? It’s hard for me to write a sartorial journal without cringing at my lack of refinement or without overly romanticizing the past. If the premise of “there is no wrong style” is true, a walk down the memory lane is an ode to all the influences that made us who we are today. Let me try :
Mani Ratnam’s films : Memory of color
Today’s notion of the Indian aesthetic is very different from what it was during my great-grandmother’s time. India was an agricultural society. Majority of the population lived in villages and farmed the land. We lived in small homes made from natural materials. Pragmatism triumphed vanity. Tradition triumphed over modernization. Our great-grandmother taught us how to live and how to think. Her home and closet had muted earthy rustic tones that match the images we see from rural Japan today when the cultural experts talk about wabi-sabi. Due to the conservative mindset, we labeled anything that deviated for it as “too gaudy”. Great-grand-ma owned about a dozen garments in all. She chose her favorite colors and weaves of fabric accordingly. They repeated over the decades and we could always identify her sense of personal style. My great-great-grandma wore white since it was a custom at that time for widows to give up color, hair, jewellry and vanity. We were mindful of flaunting our clothes around her. They would reprimand us if we bought clothes when we didn’t need them. All in all, we kept our consumerism in check. When I was a child, dressing humbly was the norm. Old worn in clothes were what one wore. Our culture didn’t romanticize it. There was no ‘wabi sabi’-esq reverence. It was understood that the common man lead a simpler life out of necessity. We would mimic the behavior of the wealthy man during events like weddings and festivals by dressing up. The “influencers” of those times were the kings, tax collectors, landlords, …. They flaunted their acquisitions and the rest aspired to play catch up by dressing up on special ocassions. The intellectual of those times were engineers, freedom fighters, writers, movie directors, priests, healers, doctors, …. Gandhi advocated for minimalism, simplicity, austere living, spirituality and breaking the dependency on western material goods. His influence stayed with the intellectuals for a few decades but eventually wore off. Mani Ratnam, India’s legendary movie director captures this aesthetic well in his older movies. Cinematography by Santosh Sivan and Rajiv Menon do a great job highlighting the beauty of such simplicity. His heroines had a personal style. The men wore simple and plain clothing. The costumes are true to the environment in which the story is narrated. Nature and humble homes served as a backdrop. My earliest memory of appreciating clothes were from his movies. My idea of beauty and sense of aesthetic derived from what I saw on screen in his films.
Aishwarya Rai’s costumes, in Priyuralu Pilichindi.
This one song taught me the the power of monochrome dressing.
The simplicity of her outfit helps keep the focus on the human in a busy environment. Given the amount of visual clutter that exists in the world, monochrome adds that one soothing element to the frame. You can’t help but focus on the element that adds the calm after your eye is done scanning the frame for details. Minimalism helps fine tune the focus. The eye picks what should be in the foreground and what should be in the background. Mine has always zoomed in on the calmer elements.
( … to be continued )