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Vogue India have divided the fashion world with a recent photoshoot which uses some of the world’s poorest people to model luxury fashion.

The magazine combined the highest fashion and the lowest standard of living to make a bold statement that has led the world to question whether this is a step too far.
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The photoshoot in the October edition features, among other images, a young poverty stricken child wearing a £100 Fendi bib.

Also featured is a poor looking family piled onto a moped driven by the crumpled looking mother who is sporting a Hermes Birkin handbag.

While some media are quick to criticise the exploitation of the plight of the poor to make a fashion statement Vogue India editor Priya Tanna points out in New York Times that the message behind the shoot is “fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful.”

So what do you think? Should this be taken at face value- is it morally wrong to dress impoverished people in designer clothes they can never afford? Or is it all in the name of making a necesary bold statement that fashion is for everyone?

Everyone asks me what I think of the “new India” now that I’m traveling around the country. My one-word answer would be it’s cold.

I have never been so cold in August in India. It’s actually swelteringly hot outside. In Delhi the parched landscapes of the hi-tech city seem to be gasping for air. In Kolkata it feels like an oven. In Hyderabad the boulder strewn red earth is baking.

But inside every building I go to it’s freezing. The brand new airport in Hyderabad needs a sweater. The malls are chilly. The airplane ride is so bone-chilling I had to dig a long-sleeved shirt out of my suitcase. The glitzy Indian School of Business is actually near Hyderabad but it feels like a Boston winter’s day inside.

Every time I come out of a mall or an office building I feel like I am enveloped in a cloud of condensation. My friend who is a photographer found his lens fogged up when he tried to take pictures. The camera had been sitting in the uber air-conditioned hotel room for two long. We had to sit and wait for it to re-adjust to the warm air outside.

These days in India it is much in vogue to try and find the “real India” versus the “new India.” There is a lot of buzz about the new issue Vogue India where poor Indians are posed against luxury goods. The goods flaunt their brand names such as Burberry and Fendi, the farmers and other Indians are nameless.

Everyone is trying to find the image that juxtaposes the two Indias – the slum next to the gated community in Gurgaon, the poor daily help and her mistress’ BMW, the rickshawpuller near the glam mall.

But I think it’s silly to posit one as the “real” India and one as not. They are both real. One is just air-conditioned. And there’s always a doorway leading from one to the other.

In today’s New York Times there is an article about the debate in India about the controversial spread in Vogue India. The photos are of the poorest of poor in India donned in Gucci, Hermes and Jimmy Choos. Some of the women in the pictures are poor and toothless or of men who don’t have money for shoes but are carrying $200 Burberry umbrellas. The coincidence of poverty and riches is strikingly disturbing yet provocative.

Many have found these pictures upsetting for good reasons. These images of the poor carrying the symbols of the uber-wealthy in a country where more than half the people live on less than a 1.25, are at best callous. I can’t help but agree that these images are indeed vulgar. However, when I read about it and looked at some of the pictures a thought did occur to me. While Vogue India certainly did not intend for this, maybe something good can come out of it.

Maybe it might make people pause for a minute and see the absurdity of a 200 dollar umbrella, or a 400 dollar pair of shoes or 1000 dollar handbags when it is on a person who can’t afford basic dental care, shoes, and lives in deplorable conditions. But who knows? Maybe all it will do is make the rich a little kinder and have them hand their old Gucci hand-bags down to their servants, so they to can walk down the streets of Mumbai in style without shoes and health care. After all, Priya Tanna, Vogue India’s editor does tell us to “Lighten up.”