indian-vogue

Vogue India to Critics: Chill Out!

cityfile · 09/02/08 07:46AM

Well done, Indian Vogue: You haven't even reached your first birthday and already you've provoked earnest hand-wringing in the international media. A 16-page editorial in the August issue, which displayed an array of designer accessories, like a $200 Burberry umbrella and a Hermes Birkin bag, on actual members of India's poverty-stricken society, was "downright distasteful," says a newspaper columnist quoted in the Times. The magazine's editor Priya Tanna, however, is unrepentant, and thinks everyone should just "lighten up." She also might want to remind people that Vogue has a long and distinguished history of exploiting poor natives of third world countries for background color in fashion shoots—there's just normally an anorexic Western model present too.