After Obama, Manmohan takes to the ramp

Though neither US President Barack Obama nor Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have made a shift to ramp modeling, both the political heads have made rather unconventional fashion debuts on the runway.

On Wednesday, taking the audience at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week by surprise, a model displayed a creation by designer Rohit Mittal with a picture of Singh on her dress. The short-length black and white checkered dress – bearing the image of a smiling Singh wearing his ...

trademark blue turban – is a part of Mittal’s Spring 2010 collection.

But if you thought this lose fitting T-Shirt dress was an original in terms of idea, then lets refresh. Just like our PM, the designer too seems to have drawn inspiration from Obama. French fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac had displayed a similar short length T Shirt dress but with an image of a smiling Obama – way back in 2008 – during the Paris Fashion Week as part of his 2009 Spring Collection.

Given Singh’s much known “love” for America and its heads of state, it is only apt that he be the other politician, apart from Obama, to feature on the ramp in an eerily similar manner.

The messages conveyed by both these dresses, however, seem different. Castelbajac put Barack’s grinning face on the yellow and black paired with gloves that read “yes” and “no” – probably his own way of campaigning for Obama, given this dress was displayed on the ramp just a month before the US presidential election in November last year.

Mittal’s creation, on the other hand, is more like a fashion stamp on the popularity of Singh, who is in his second consecutive term as PM and has tasted continuous electoral success recently with the Congress winning several state elections in a row.

While it is fun to see some kitschy, edgy fashion with a parliamentarian hue, one wonders what the designers do with these very ‘politically correct’ clothes post these fashion shows.

On another thought, Singh does seem to be following on US Presidents’ footsteps in several aspects. Now that the current US President has been awarded the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, what next for Dr Singh?

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