For Gaurav Monga, the New Delhi–Based Writer and Teacher, Fashion Is Still a Child of Decay
Discussing Clothing, Walter Benjamin’s Theories, and Why Karl Lagerfeld’s Public Persona Is a Fascinating One
They say the best fashion insights often come from fashion outsiders. In the case of Gaurav Monga, this couldn’t be more true. The New Delhi–based writer and teacher is the author, amongst others, of The Fashion Dictionary and Costumes of The Living, two prolific works that explore the relationship between clothing and life or even the afterlife.
Currently teaching at schools and universities in India, Nepal, Switzerland, Dubai, and the Czech Republic, Monga has managed to create a personal language that combines epistemology, deep literary knowledge, and artistic flair. We sat down to discuss clothing, Walter Benjamin’s theories, and why Karl Lagerfeld’s public persona deeply fascinates him.
How would you introduce yourself to TheStyleTitle readers?
I write prose poetry and short fiction, and I tend to lean somewhere in between a short story and a prose poem. In the recent past, I have been very fascinated with the language of clothing so I wrote Costumes of the Living, a short collection of clothes-related or clothes-inspired prose poems. I'm an outsider to fashion in the strict sense but I found it very interesting to write about clothing.
I've been very fascinated with the language of clothes and how clothing is so anthropologically essential. It has also inspired me to read and educate myself more about fashion. Coincidentally, I grew up, in a home full of fashion designers. There was a lot of fashion around me so it's personal.
Interesting…
I didn't realize it at first. My mother is from Kashmir, so a lot of clothing comes from there such as all different kinds of shawls. Kashmir is different than most parts of India because it has actual seasons, a real fall, and a cold winter which affects our sartorial habits. Both Costumes of The Living and The Fashion Dictionary use clothing as a language or the language of clothing or fashion. I'm also very interested in the notion of culture and how it is expressed through fashion.
You have mentioned off-tape Giacomo Leopardi's quote that Fashion is a Child of Decay. How do you think that applies to today's fashion?
I teach this excerpt in class in the form of theatrical dialogue. I ask one person to do death and one person to do fashion. This is a work created before the advent of globalized fast fashion but feels very modern. And it's interesting because we find the anthropological need to renew your wardrobe, something that predates the capitalist consumption of clothing.
The poorer classes of society albeit without access to expensive materials, did tend to have their own fashions.
This relationship still holds. The mechanism of mass line production or capital structures or whatever you want to call it, has only exasperated this intrinsic anthropological desire and pushed it to the maximum.
Maybe it goes even deeper as an expression of mimetic desire…
Interestingly, there is a relationship between fashion and death and this idea of decay and renewal. There's one entry in the Fashion Dictionary where I discuss Walter Benjamin's notion of historical time being cyclical and how he uses the image of a dress to discuss circularity.
I also admire Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. It’s such a beautiful work of experimental literature. He was a conservative-leaning man but his definition of man as a clothes-wearing animal, and the idea that the clothes constantly have to die is still very fresh. Again, this is an outsider talking, just like me…
That's the interesting part.
The overall language of clothing is very interesting, especially if you would look at it as a sort of overall semiotic. One figure whom I always find fascinating is Karl Lagerfeld…
Maybe because he managed to look like a caricature of himself and himself at the same time.
I don't even know much about his designs. But I am interested in how he projected himself and how he fashioned himself in public. He had even prepared the clothes which he wanted to be dressed in death. There's always this game of substance and surfaces. Who was the real Lagerfeld? You know, this man always created myths, even regarding his own father and heritage.
So there is the private and public aspect of clothing. When do clothes become “fashion”?
This reminds me of Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel Naomi. The main character is not interested in wearing her clothes out, she likes to dress up at home primarily. And this completely, you know, kind of reorients the notion of the public. In Costumes of the Living, I've written this idea of clothes as a hiding place. Funnily enough, I don't think there was anything like dressing down until maybe the last 75 years or something, Do clothes require being watched? Do you need to be watched to make clothes fashionable?
What is your favorite work from The Fashion Dictionary?
Pattern. It's just a three-liner but it strongly carries this antithesis between private and public, or inner and outer. Just as in Tanizaki’s work, when she removes her clothes, the pattern on her kaftan sort of lingers on her skin. I just like that image.
A FASHION DICTIONARY awaits publishing as a beautifully crafted book in 2024 from Blackscat Books
Interesting. I'd never heard of "Neo Delhi" before. Google tells me it's some sort of "postcolonial" concept. India was never a colony, however; it was a separate realm, the Empire of India, administered by the British with which it shared a monarch, Queen/King of Great Britain and Empress/Emperor of India, always separate titles sometimes styled as Queen-Empress of Great Britain and India, etc. Britain simply wasn't large enough to colonize India in a real way, as with North America where there was one Native for every three square miles of land when settler-colonization began. There was little imposition of Anglo culture that Indians didn't adopt themselves by choice, something that has left them with a competitive edge in the modern world where English is the lingua franca, which only the silliest radical-with-no-cause would consider a bad thing for a country separated by 15 official languages with as many alphabets, whose parliament sits with headphones for translation. It's always been the one thing that has kept India unified under extreme stress from secessionists. Just saying.