We’ve all felt the disappointment of not being able to afford an outfit you know would look killer on you. We’ve all wished we had a credit card whose bill would get magically paid in all of these cases. Which inevitably made us question, why do the rich not use their money more wisely and buy clothes that are cooler? We’ve all wished we could get rich just so we could splurge like it’s nobody’s business.
Why do we common folk feel this way?
The thing with fashion is that it is a money game. We don’t disagree that you can look fabulous in Sarojini Nagar clothes too, however, with a bank balance come options. As a trend, you will find that the rich always wear expensive clothing but not the kind of experimental outfits that money could buy--that Alexander McQueen corset belt, the Halpern Studio metallic dress. Instead, they’re mostly in Gap sweatshirts and Gucci leggings. We get that the more you have, the less you care about things like how you’re looking in public but, for the sake of fashion and those who cannot afford it, we beg them to look outside the pool of generic outfits that any person with 1/10th the budget can recreate! How else are we ever going to be inspired to be more experimental if the ones who can be, don’t? How else will fashion ever progress if everyone is content with the most basic outfit there is? Every fashion junkie would agree with that!
Why we are forming this comparison
We’re in an age where everything from minimalism to maximalism to androgyny and athleisure is accepted and celebrated. It opens up the option of dressing in whichever way you like. There is no cap on what is right or wrong--but a sense of style in all of it is crucial. Take Gauri Khan, Kareena Kapoor (she looks gorgeous in everything but she’s not very experimental), Katrina Kaif etc., etc. You’d not see them being avant garde fashionable--you get what we mean?
There might be only designer labels in her wardrobe--from lingerie to socks--yet none of it is unconventional or fashion-forward, to say the least. The same goes for almost the whole of Bollywood. The only person we can consider for this brief is Natasha Poonawalla. The philanthropist and celebrity BFF really goes all out when it comes to dressing up and, for that, we simply love her. From OTT-feathered masterpieces to giant hats and blingy dresses, Nat has been single-handedly spearheading the experimental rich tribe. Others who are trailblazers in this section have to be Priyanka Chopra, Ranveer Singh, Sonam Kapoor, Diljit Dosanjh, and even Sobhita Dhulipala with her quirky sense of style. (We loved her recent Huemn co-ord set with the messy pony for a Netflix interview.)
At the end , the one thing we have to ask is whether this coherent lack of personal style is an epidemic amongst the ultra rich or whether it’s because they simply don’t care? We need answers and we need them now!