The Ambani Wedding Amplified South Asian Fashion Worldwide — But At What Cost?
FromJuly12 to 14, Anant Ambani married Radhika Merchant.
It would have been as genial an affair as any fun wedding in India — if he weren’t the son of Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s wealthiest man, and she the daughter of Viren Merchant, a pharmaceutical tycoon. The wedding events, which spanned five months in Mumbai (the engagement ceremony, where Rihanna performed, happened back in March), have all been an ostentatious, stomach-churning peacocking of opulence that reportedly cost $600 million.
For as long as the Ambanis have been celebrating these ceremonies, the rest of the world has been inundated with images of the world’s filthy rich — Bollywood and Hollywood A-listers, presidents and prime ministers, CEOs and moguls all in attendance. And if the wedding’s red carpet is any indication, this wedding was as much of a sartorial show as a celebration of a union.
Famed fashion designer Manish Malhotra was the creative director of the wedding, while Merchant and Ambani both wore one-of-a-kind Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla on the day of the Hindu ceremony. Falguni Shane Peacock, Sabyasachi, Anamika Khanna, and Tarun Tahiliani are among the dozens of high-fashion houses represented at the wedding.
Through the extensive coverage of the wedding both inside and outside of India, South Asian designers surfaced to global fame, designing some of their most intricate couture pieces to date, a meticulous blend of craftsmanship and tradition. (Though the jury’s out on whether it’s their best work.)
For the Haldi ceremony, Merchant donned a dupatta by Anamika Khanna made from 1,000 fresh jasmine flowers, while Falguni Shane Peacock crafted an ivory lehenga with hundreds of encrusted diamonds and pearls for Anant’s older sister, Isha Ambani.
The press and social media alike have ogled at the looks that have come out of the Ambani wedding, worn by both South Asian and non-South Asian guests. As they should, since the looks are set to influence wedding fashion trends in the years to come.
But what we’re also ogling at is a boiled-down portrait of South Asian fashion that’s rooted in hypercapitalism. Fashion is culture, and culture is fashion — and this extravaganza is hardly what we want the world to take away about South Asia, especially as wealth inequality in the region soars.
This very disparity was evident over the wedding weekend, with two sets of images inundating us from Mumbai: of the Ambani wedding’s red carpet, with attendees donning precious stones and fine fabrics — and the other of monsoon-soaked garments belonging to Mumbai’s working-class population just across the Mithi River, whose infrastructure was destroyed by excessive flooding.
“That is to say, the Mumbai monsoons can be the backdrop for a wedding extravaganza only if you’re Mukesh Ambani,” writer Poulomi Das aptly observed.
Some have argued that the grandeur of the Ambani wedding has dismantled assumptions of South Asia as third-world, deprived and depraved. This may be true; after all, the wedding has proven the region’s rising affluence and emerging class of golden billionaires, Ambanis included.
In either extreme, perpetuating one narrative corrodes the richness of our culture. And if anything, the richest parts of South Asian fashion and culture derive from the nuance, the in-between, from the saris that women on rice fields wear while harvesting to the gold jewelry that’s been passed down from generation to generation.
Young South Asians — both in India and in the diaspora — have been especially vocal about the ick they’re feeling. One TikToker used the pre-wedding events in March (when Rihanna performed for $9 million and subsequently pronounced Merchant’s name wrong during the show) dove into how the Ambanis have exploited and perpetuated wealth inequity.
“I have controversial thoughts about the Ambani wedding but don’t want to be known as the hater on the internet,” another TikToker said. One user commented: “I think it’s okay to be a hater in this instance - spending millions on what is a glorified Bollywood production of a wedding in a country with over 290 mil people under poverty line is ??”
But perhaps our willingness to hate-watch the spectacle of it all reveals the worst parts of ourselves — that while we can’t stand capitalism, the rich can buy and exalt global attention. And if that red carpet, the ”Keeping Up With The Kardashians” camera crew (Kim and Khloé Kardashian are in the middle of filming), and the private Justin Beiber concert are any indication, the wedding wasn’t a wedding. It was a performance.
Related...
Solve the daily Crossword
