…it’s a bunch of Wornettes in the sky.

Staff meetings, no matter how many cheezies and beer might be consumed during, always have a tendency to be more business than pleasure. However, when Anisha said she could give us access to her apartment’s roof (and, ahem, indoor pool) for the evening, we were up there faster than a teen getting pregnant at Degrassi High. I think every meeting could be made more productive when you are eye-level with the CN Tower.

photography by Hillary Predko and G. Stegelmann

The feeling of anticipation in a darkening movie theatre is generally universal. On this occasion I was more eager than usual. A few weeks prior I had seen a superbly edited trailer featuring a rapid succession of beautiful shots from the upcoming film, A Single Man. Being a self-proclaimed cinephile, my pulse quickened with the emotional reminders of great cinematic experiences past. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed, but not for the reasons you’d think….

A Single Man takes place in Los Angeles at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Adapted (from a Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name), directed, and produced by legendary fashion lord and first time filmmaker Tom Ford, it is a solemn tale of a man coming to grips with the painful loss of the love of his life. Colin Firth’s heart-breaking performance is touching and the stuff the best dramas are made of (and just as an aside, it was nice to see Firth challenged by a role that was not a type-cast of Jane Austen’s impenetrable Mr. Darcy).

However, the driving force of the film is the cinematography and the overall vision of Ford as auteur. Every shot from beginning to end is, without question, absolutely beautiful. It is specifically Ford’s background in fashion as a designer, photographer, and creative director that shines through; after all, he mastered the creation of perfect images in an industry where image is everything. He brings this same attention to detail to all the visual elements in the film.

From the shock of a woman’s red lipstick, and the sweat beading on men playing tennis, to the profound ugliness of make-up plastered on a woman of a certain age, this film revels in the details. I cannot help but remember one scene in particular that occurs towards the end of the film: A shot is taken from above of Firth lying on the floor. For a few seconds a pair of shiny black shoes breaches the frame. Those shoes function as a subtle emotional signifier that I am sure, in another director’s hands, would not have existed.

But by now you must be wondering, if this movie was such a thing of beauty, why was I disappointed? Well it turns out too much beauty is not a good thing; after a while, the steady march of gorgeous images just became a distraction, competing with the narrative, rather than complementing it. As one critic put it, “[It] is overbearingly aesthetic…. [You] are not able to enter the story emotionally because of the level of the aesthetic care in each scene.” In some instances that aesthetic care feels pretentious and contrived. This is also apparent in the casting of minor characters, who are so over-the-top good looking they could only be models.

As a viewer, I want to be able to relate to the people on screen. They shouldn’t be the glossy super-humans found in magazine spreads, blank canvases to be idealized and desired. Yes, this is film and, on some level, fantasy, but Ford’s perfect specimens are more akin to waxed dolls than humans. No longer simply a better looking version of real life, their aesthetic demands so much focus, the story these characters ought to be telling gets lost.

It is imperfection and spontaneity that can make a work of beauty go from good to great; too much flawlessness is boring. But if my problem with Tom Ford’s first outing as a filmmaker is that, in his naivety, he filled it to the brim with too much pretty, well, I can’t wait for his next project.

Then we’ll see if he can learn to edit his fashion mega-lord tendencies…

- Anisha Seth

Thanks to globalization and India’s emergence as an economic powerhouse in the last decade, the latest bout of Western infatuation with all things Indian is arguably the most intense it has been since the heady days of British colonialism. There has been a a recent artistic renaissance, coupled with a steady increase in both interest and export. First it was a small curiosity about Bollywood films, solidified by Slumdog Millionaire, followed by the wild success of Indian contemporary art in the last five years. It is no wonder that the next area of focus would be fashion. Contemporary Indian Fashion, edited by Federico Rocca, is a visually stunning and well-curated coffee-table book featuring 24 leading young designers working out of India. They not only represent the here-and-now of Indian fashion, but its future as well.

This is, essentially, a picture book. Made up of 6 to 12 page spreads, the work of each designer is showcased along with a very short rundown of their background and an interview. All of the clothes are wonderful to look at, and I found myself flipping through it again and again, as I would a really great magazine. Each spread nicely balances editorial flourishes, pages featuring multiple looks from a collection, and several detail shots. In the case of Indian fashion, the prominence of the detail shot is absolutely essential due to the meticulous details of the clothes themselves.

One of the things that sets Indian designers apart from their international counterparts is their use of traditional hand-craft techniques. Everything from embroidery to beading, cut-work to weaving, is used to maximum effect. As Rocca points out in his introduction, for Indian designers, “God is in the details.”

There is text in this book, too. The short introduction manages to give the reader a primer on Indian-ness and the current influence of ’80s-style consumerism that has swept the sub-continent. However, while mostly concise, the writing style has a few problems. At times it can be convoluted and confusing. Rocca doesn’t seem to know whether he wants the writing to be analytical and academic or simply a casual blogger-style presentation of the now. Also, it (especially in the intro) conveys an affected pretentiousness. He states that the book’s aim is to answer the question: “Will an Indian designer ever dress Western women?” He then makes repeated references to German film director Wim Wenders, Mies van der Rohe, and Latin and French phrases. It seems that Mr. Rocca, an Italian fashion journalist, wants to distance himself from his non-Western subject. This is sad, since the designs featured here are more than enough to quell any prejudiced notions of third world inferiority.

The fact that the content of this book has been defined in the terms of the West is annoying, an exercise in Eurocentric validation. These are designers that could potentially, or have already, broken into Western markets. The uniqueness of contemporary Indian design is the melding of both eastern and western aesthetics, all the while staying true to traditional Indian textile and adornment processes and techniques. The combination is elegant, lush, modern and beautiful; India does not need to be patted on the head by foreign fashion editors.

And it may be due to the distance between the author and his subject, but I get the sense that not much on-the-ground research was done – indicated in part by extremely short designer interviews (so short, in fact, they might easily have been conducted via text message). Beside thorough and sumptuous fashion spreads, these tiny interviews feel either superfluous or totally insufficient. When put together, these gaffs and gaps suggest Rocca is an unreliable narrator, calling into question the thoroughness of the book as a whole.

In addition to these issues, Mr. Rocca and the good folks at Damiani should remember that readers appreciate the little things – like a table of contents, an index, and PAGE NUMBERS! Information regarding the number of designers featured in this book and the number of pages dedicated to each was brought to you by this reviewer’s ability to flip pages and count. Although initially distracted by the gorgeous pictures, when I wanted to go back and find a particular designer or look, I had to search page by page. Completely unacceptable.

However, although problematic in its motivations (and a tad in its execution), this book is really the only one of its kind out there, and it’s been a long time coming. There has been a definite dearth of comprehensive looks at the major changes the Indian fashion industry has undergone in the past few years. In that sense, Contemporary Indian Fashion is a great starting point from which to dive into the beautiful, colourful, and detailed designs being produced in the sub-continent. At the very least, it will make any lover of fashion absolutely happy.

Well, until they try to find something twice.

Contemporary Indian Fashion, by Federico Rocca, Damiani, 2009
Reviewed by Anisha Seth

“Fashion is a social force that functions effectively not only as an economic engine but as a semiotic system that transmits social and political messages by means of nonverbal language rich in signs, symbols and iconography.” - Ayala Raz, The Equalizing Shoe

For most people, shoes are not the first thing that come to mind when thinking about Jewish cultural heritage. However, after taking a look at Jews and Shoes, a compilation of fourteen academic essays on the apparently unique relationship Jewish people have had with shoes, one must rethink the assumption that shoes are of no particular importance.

Given the Jewish people’s legacy as eternal wanderers, it makes sense that footwear may have taken on a deeper meaning for them. However, this book is far more detailed than that. Split into four thematic sections, it covers a variety of cultural instances where shoes play an important role: religion and the Bible, memorials, political ideology and the arts. To my mind, the strongest essay in this book is a fascinating analysis that questions the commodity fetishism of the piles of shoes found at Holocaust memorials. Having never been to a Holocaust memorial myself, I was surprised to learn of their emphasis on displaying the personal items of those interred and killed at the camps to show the magnitude of the numbers of possessions that were methodically sorted into piles by Nazis intending to redistribute them later. The author, Jeffrey Feldman, does an absolutely superb job of relating memorial attendees’ very visceral reactions to these piles upon piles of shoes of all sorts and the sights, smells, and textures that come from all that rotting leather. The questions posed are not only thought provoking in terms of the legacy of the Holocaust, but about how artefacts and museum objects are structured and displayed in order to evoke an emotional response.

An ancient Roman sandal. Essentially the type of shoe referred to in the book as a ‘biblical sandal’.

Unfortunately, not all of the essays are as well done. I found the first section, dealing with religious and biblical references to shoes, to be weak and tedious. In this section more than any other, I was struck by the dullness of the academic writing style and found that these essays in particular suffer from the Cultural Studies vice of overanalyzing commonplace objects trying to extract more meaning than there is. Sometimes a shoe is just a shoe. At times it also felt as if I needed a working knowledge of the Bible in order to really understand the points that a few of these authors were trying to make. Maybe I’m wrong, and that reference to shoes in Exodus is more significant than I think, however, not having sat down with a copy of the Bible before tearing into this I was left feeling a bit drowned in biblical minutiae.

The profession of shoemaker has historically and traditionally be held by Jews.

That said, although it has its weaknesses, I do recommend this book. Even though it only deals with one culture, as a non-Jewish reader I was fascinated by the importance of shoes in human history, and, as one author puts it, “the communicative role of footwear.” Plus, since this is formatted as a collection of essays, you can dive in and out as you please. At the very least the wonderfully rhyming title will surely make you smile.

Jews and Shoes edited by Edna Nahshon (Berg, 2008).
Reviewed by Anisha Seth.