Shreya Sen-Handley | Clothes maketh the man proscriptive and pompous

A corpulent orange man, slimily oozing out of his monkey suit, and his heavily made-up henchman (eye-liner, mascara and foundation, laid on with a heavy hand) hounding another fellow, who has literally been through the wars, for his perceived lack of sartorial elegance, made for the most gobsmacking political broadcast ever. Oh, you know — Donald Trump and J.D. Vance ambushing and then humiliating, Mafia-style, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy for not confining himself, on his trip to the Shite House, to those straitjacket-type suits that much of the Western world believe is the height of men’s fashion.

Some men carry it off with panache, but that doesn’t include Trump and Vance whose dumpy frames and big-top glow-ups leave a lot to be desired. We could all, including the clowns in question, do with a lot LESS of Donald’s chokingly-thick orange spray tan and J.D.’s tacky eye makeup (let Usha out of the attic, Vance, so she can help you apply it better).

Amongst Western men as well, the best dressed are those who cut their own swathe on the red carpet — flamboyant actor Colman Domingo, for example, lighting up every film awards in the last few months, or Scottish BAFTA host David Tennant in his twinkling jacket and tartan skirt.

Let’s also be clear that I have no gender-restrictive problems with men in makeup, but a) not if they’re then hectoring someone else for not dressing conservatively enough, and b) the cosmetic industry is best avoided as much as possible anyway, with its skin-damaging snake oil hardsell and horrific animal testing history.

Let other people debate the rights and wrongs of the Russian-Ukraine war, there are further questions thrown up by this embarrassing smackdown that must be tackled, a) “Why are we allowing these knuckle-dragging American goons to dictate to the whole world, when even our village idiots are smarter?” But also, let’s do what we’re always told we mustn’t and focus on appearances! When it comes to clothes, we must ask ourselves b) “What is appropriate?”, and, more importantly, c) “Who on earth has the right to decide that, other than each of us for ourselves?!”

To this day, conservative societal restrictions on clothing drive me wild. Growing up in India in the eighties, I felt stifled and hemmed in by The Rules of Good Indian Womanhood that had nothing to do with striving for excellence. Show as little of your form as possible and even less individuality (I did both), they scolded, and never, NEVER fly in the face of conventions (did that too, flew into ’em so often, I landed up in another country!). Before that, I’d changed schools because they insisted that girls over sixteen had to wear saris. Saris are gorgeous but I won’t be told.

Patriarchy continues to drill women on what to wear, all over the world. “She must cover herself from the eyes of weak, grasping, incontinent men or be molested, with only herself to blame!” And as if the instructions weren’t confusing enough already, we are then told, albeit not by the same folk, “Young women should wear as little as possible on nights out, because hypothermia is better than being overlooked by unimaginative men!”

But not just the male-female chasm, the East-West divide definitely deepens over apparel. A reporter is said to have interrogated Gandhi, returning from a visit to see the British King, about his freeflowing Indian garments. “Do you think you’re suitably dressed to meet The King?” And Gandhi replied, with more wit in his spare frame than his hidebound opponents possessed collectively, “Don’t worry about my clothing, The King was wearing enough for both of us.” Churchill’s taunting of him as a “naked fakir” had clearly not shaken him into taking his eyes off what was important.

I had this in mind when I was invited to meet The Queen last year in London. Taking a long-distance public bus as my group of invitees were, I decided against a beautiful but slippery-on-wet-London-streets sari, opting for an everyday cotton kurta and black trousers instead, with the concession of an inexpensive silver scarf added to the ensemble for a sliver of sparkle, and was the most underdressed person there till The Queen turned up in her casual afternoon dress!

It’s quite possible people thought I’d rolled up in my pyjamas, as had happened once before, when my three-year-old son’s kurta-churidar at a party was criticised by an elderly white lady for resembling nightwear. No, it’s you wearing tropical day clothes to bed every night, Granny, because your lot got it wrong when they blundered into India, not the other way round.

So, the East considers tight togs immoral and the West thinks flowing dress sloppy. Keeping in mind that French nobility only ever put on fresh underwear when the previous pair had mouldered and dropped off their haunches, they aren’t in a position to lecture anybody. And the East, worse than the West when it comes to the modern-day mistreatment of women, should cease forever from telling us what we cannot wear.

If Aishwarya wants to flaunt large tinfoil wrapping she imagines is Western couture on the Cannes red carpet, who are we to snigger at it? Although Sabyasachi did a splendid job of dressing Deepika for the same event, that doesn’t give him the right either to tell Indian women to stick to saris (preferably his, I’m sure). Why should there be only one way to dress? Each to his or her own, I say!

So, don’t let that man in the terrible toupee dictate your fashion choices, Zelenskyy, sort out the war instead.