Powder Room: The Untold Story of Indian Fashion

About The Book Ever been intrigued by the Indian Fashion Industry—its stereotypes of drugged models gay designers and fascinating but unaffordable clothes? Join Shefalee Vasudev former editor of Marie Claire and an acclaimed fashion journalist on a deep‑sea dive into the gagging depths of Indian fashion. In Powder Room she offers an insider’s view of people who make the industry what it is—from a lower middle class girl who sells global luxury for a living to a designer who fights the inner demons of child sexual abuse yet manages to survive and thrive in the business of fashion or a Ludhiana housewife on a perpetual fashion high. Besides candid interviews of known names in Indian fashion Shefalee provides a commentary on new social behaviour urban culture generational differences and the compulsions behind conspicuous consumption in a country splitting at the seams with inequalities of opportunity and wealth. From Nagaland to Patan Mumbai Delhi and Punjab Powder Room mirrors how and why India ‘does’ fashion.Key Features Shefalee Vasudev is the former editor of Marie Claire one of India’s top fashion magazines Honest in depth and untold story of Indian fashion Will appeal to the youth sociologists fashion fraternity as well as an everyday Indian Contains exclusive interviews and perspectives on top designers like Rohit Bal Sabyasachi Mukherjee Tarun Tahiliani etc. ‘Shefalee Vasudev’s Powder Room gives the fashion industry the book it needed—by providing a non-fiction account of a world that appears only to exist in fiction.’—Nonita Kalra Editor-In-Chief ELLE ‘An insider’s account written with journalistic detachment and perspective that captures the triumphs and contradictions of India’s fashion culture.’—Vir Sanghvi Author Television Host Advisor HT Media ‘Insightful upbeat and gripping. If you are curious about Indian fashion this is the book to read!’—Suneet Varma Fashion Designer ‘Powder Room is a serious address to the fashion obsession of India’s moneyed classes by a gifted writer who is uniquely both insider and outsider to the dross and the floss of the industry.’—Patricia Uberoi Sociologist ‘Shefalee Vasudev’s Powder Room is a compelling narration which intertwines characters from designers and fashion journalists to consumers and weavers while giving an insight into the complex relationships between cultural groups and social classes.’—William Nanda Bissell owner FabIndia ‘‘A lark of a book a romp a pilgrimage a clinical analysis of the world of fashion capturing its creativity and chronicling its impact. The world of Indian fashion has found the right storyteller honest curious and tongue-in-chic.’—Shiv Visvanathan Social Anthropologist ‘What I learnt in two days twirling through the unputdownable Powder Room I did not learn in twenty-five years in Indian fashion. Here is the glory and the underbelly the neurosis and the sanity the myth and the truth.’—Wendell Rodricks Author and Fashion Designer