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Stories We Wear

Status, Spectacle and The Politics of Appearance

By Shefalee Vasudev
2025, Published by Westland

Journalist and cultural commentator Shefalee Vasudev has spent over twenty-five years
observing and chronicling fashion and culture. In this book, she distils her extensive
experience to expose the quiet truths eclipsed by a culture of noise and spectacle.

Reviews

[In ‘Masaba: Lovechild of the Instagram Era’] Shefalee writes about Masaba’s uncanny ability to create stories about the right representation, that through the minority resonate with the majority. As a fellow strategist, let me tell you that creating desire through strategy is probably the highest form of creativity.

In this hauntingly vivid chapter [‘Last Rights’], Shefalee shares images, stories and personal memories associated with death and those who stand witness to its finality. … Long after you have finished it, this chapter will remind of you of the reporter’s personal pathos, her muted compassion and the exquisitely tender portrayal of threads that bind a daughter to her father.

Every day, there is bland reportage of death, loss of lives. These narratives and statistics do not capture the personal meaning of loss nor what individuals experience as breath ebbs away. Shefalee’s chapter [‘Last Rights’] places a prism against death. ‘It uses memory and personal experience—like a prism that refracts light—to transform and gain perspective on the many faces of death.

[In ‘Wearing Politics’] Shefalee Vasudev examines how India’s political class constructs its public image through clothing. Politicians are acutely aware of the semiotics of attire. Every kurta, sari, dhoti and angavastram is deliberate, chosen to reinforce ideology or evoke religious symbolism, and tailored to resonate with specific constituencies. In politics, clothes are less personal expression than carefully managed performance.

By recording the thoughts of many people deeply involved in the different aspects of production and marketing of khadi, [in ‘Khadi’s Identity Crisis’] Shefalee has brought us face to face with the very palpable identity crisis the world of khadi faces today.