Me? At a fashion show? Has the world gone stark raving mad? I’m a computers and football man upon whom fashion gave up a long ago as a lost cause. I would wear sweat pants to work if my boss would let me, so what business, you may wonder, do I have being at a swanky fashion show at Chennai’s most expensive 5 star hotel?

Well. It went a little something like this…

Girlfriend: Hey, you wanna come to a fashion show next weekend?
Me: *Makes a screwed up face*
GF: What?! You’ll like it, lots of pretty ladies on the catwalk for you to look at.

Ha, I didn’t get to the ripe old age of 28 without learning at least something about girls, no matter what my mum thinks. For any young male readers, you are about to be schooled…

Me: But you’re the prettiest girl I know, why would I want to look at any other girl?

And that, kids, is how it’s done 😉

GF: Aww, that’s so sweet, but you should come, there will be free food.

Now, at this point I should mention that if you want people, or anyone, to come to your event in India, you have to lay on free food. The most successful stall at a recent “food security” expo wasn’t the one that had the traditional folk dance, it wasn’t the cute puppet show and nor was it the one where they sang a humourous song about fruit complete with banana actions, it was the one which gave away free food.

Me: Meh, you’re speaking to the wrong person, food is nothing but fuel for the body
GF: Hmph! Well there will be a free bar there too.

So I rocked up to the hotel all suited and booted at 7pm, the show was due to start at 8pm but I wanted to make sure I got a good seat at the bar by the catwalk.

Now, I should probably reiterate here that this hotel is proper swanky like and it isn’t for regular folk, it’s for the people who can swan up in top of the range BMW’s, Mercedes, Jags, Porsches, Audi’s and Bentley’s. Obviously it was impossible for me to show up without a set of wheels and since my peers had chosen some of the finest names in European automotive manufacturing, I too needed something to prove that I was their equal.

After some thought on the matter I decided to opt for an Italian thoroughbred, a name synonymous with prestige and known throughout the world: The Piaggio 2 Stroke 50cc Apé City, colloquially referred to as the tuk-tuk. Yeah, I know I had envious eyes on me as I stepped out this finely crafted beast and deftly slipped my driver a 100 rupee note, “Keep the change” I said, nonchalantly, and the driver roared off saying something about “vela kaka’s”.

I certainly turned a few heads when I turned up in this Italian designed beauty

Unfortunately for me, the organizers of the event had realized long ago that if you offer a free bar it’s best to open it after the event so as to keep people’s minds focused on the show at hand. And so it was that I walked in to an alien world of high class sophistication and took my seat next to the catwalk.

The fashion show was to launch the 2012 saree collection of a fashion designer here in Chennai. I’m not totally familiar with the intricacies of saree design, but apparently I saw corporate wear, casual wear, concept wear and bridal wear although not necessarily in that order. I think that as with all things fashionable that walk down the catwalk, it’s very hard to see how the clothes would translate in to real life for the real person. For example the casual wear sarees revealed more flesh than the average Geordie lass on a night out on the ‘toon and the corporate sarees would have everyone asking what the special occasion is.

The intermission between each set had performances by a urban dance act calling themselves Fictitious Group, they were actually finalists on the Indian version of the Got Talent franchise. They danced to a mashup of music and movie sound clips and it worked pretty well, although it was totally out of place for the fashion show, see for yourself in the video below…

And if you want to see pretty girls in sarees (don’t forget that some of these are branded as corporate and casual wear) checkout the slideshow below. I don’t know why it right aligns the portrait photos though and the image quality is appalling, but we’ll just have to live with it for now.