Magnificent Obsession

In Mumbai, a monumental fashion exhibition charts the MARLEY MARIUS

“BEGINNING IN THE 17th century and continuing to this day, India’s impact on Western fashion has been a complicated and layered history of admiration, appropriation, exploitation, and celebration.” So writes Hamish Bowles, Vogue’s global editor at large and the editor in chief of The World Of Interiors, in India In Fashion, a lavish new book due this spring from Riz zoli, which he edited and contributed to alongside writers including Suzy Menkes, Priyanka R. Khanna, Avalon Fotheringham and Alia Allana. “The treasury of India’s sartorial and textile traditions have provided inspiration that led to imitation at the court of Louis XVI and the couturiers of Jazz Age Paris, the sportswear designers of mid-century America, and the hippies of the Summer of Love,” he continues. Yet for all of that cultural cross-pollination, the role that Indian arts and crafts have played in shaping global aesthetics has not always received its due.