Fashion’s newest IT girl Monikangana Dutta reveals the underbelly of the glamour trade
It’s easy to understand why Monikangana Dutta is the current darling of the fashion world — glowingly dusky, Amazonianly leggy, with a ball-busting attitude to match.
“It’s sad to see that half the Indian designers don’t know what they’re doing — some make couture clothes for prêt shows and prêt clothes for couture shows,” states 23-year-old Moni, whose career kick-started with the Paris Fashion Week in 2004. “C’mon, how can you do that? That’s quite crazy,” she laughs.
With sex and drugs being the hottest flavour of the news, ask her how debauched the fashion world is, and she reveals, “This industry is all about sex and drugs! Though I don’t know why people make such a big deal about sex. It’s a basic — you need it. As for drugs, if you want to do it, don’t do it publicly.”
What about the prevalence of ‘coke daddies’ — sleazy older men who ply young models with drugs in return for sexual favours? “Of course coke daddies exist! I’ve seen people doing it. Everyone is into something or the other in the fashion world.”
Assam born, now Mumbai based, Moni gets candid on the other ‘dark side’ of the modelling trade. “People have dropped me from TV commercials at the last minute because they got more fair-skinned girls. Over here, people are still not ready to accept that dusky skin can launch a brand,” she exclaims.
That’s not to say that internationally, Moni has not come across this discrimination. “In France, when I went to meet Yohji Yamamoto, I was shocked. He said, ‘I really like you, I like your face, but I can’t use you for my show’. And I was like, why? He said because he had never used an Indian girl before — that he wasn’t comfortable with it. I was so shattered on hearing that.”
With Bollywood not on her agenda (she in fact walked out of an art film that had Kamal Sidhu and Sandhya Mridul in it because of “certain kissing/nudity scenes”), what’s Moni’s big dream ahead? “I think the YSL campaign is every model’s dream,” she winds up.
d_farhad@dnaindia.net
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