Linen in khadi garb

Linen in khadi garb

The election season is here. I am told you are consulted on strategy by political parties and politicians. A simple question. I am a dress designer. How do the clothes politicians wear make a difference?

New Delhi

Rama, clothes surely make a man in politics. Politics is a huge perception game. And sadly, from the perspective of those of us who are not finicky about the clothes we wear, perception is more important than the truth. Clothes are, therefore, very important to a politician. And they do invest a fair bit of attention in this.

In the realm of politics, most of the time, the majority does not meet the politician in the flesh. It sees him or her only in media. Therefore, what one sees is important. That is how politicians are usually assessed, especially as people devote very little time to weighing politicians in terms of their mind. What is assessed first and what assumes a fair bit of language is the clothes and the accoutrements a politician wears.

When you see Lalu Prasad Yadav dressed the way he is normally seen, and when you see his special grooming (with ear hair et al), you assess Laloo as the rustic, rural-connected political persona. And when you see an impeccably clad Shashi Tharoor, you judge him accordingly. Clothes surely maketh the person.

Voters live in many buckets. There is a voter who is the mass, and there is the voter who is a niche. The guy at the mass end is a troubled soul. Money does not come by easily, he works in the fields, is forever scrounging for the basics and is therefore as rustic as they come. To this guy, seeing his politician nattily clad is a distancing factor. He would never like to see his favourite politician in a suit or a piece of Western attire. Even ‘bandhgalas’ are out. He loves seeing his political persona in khadi. The politician, of course, has read this and cheated. He sports linen, which is more expensive in terms of price, but looks like khadi. The politician must not alienate himself from his electorate. He needs to be sensitive to this. Flaunting gold, even in his teeth, is out. Looking basic and real and connected is important. A plain old maroon or saffron string tied on the wrist works. It tells the masses that this politico is as connected to the superstitious and the spiritual as he is. Makes him more human and less super-politician.

For the politician, God is in the small details of his dressing. Even the pagdi (turban) tied on the head of a politician by someone else, as opposed to the politician himself tying it in public view, conveys different messages. The former conveys that this is a laad sahib or “pampered Baba”, while the latter conveys that this person is like I am. Sachin Pilot (in picture above) did just this when he took charge of the Rajasthan unit of the Congress a few weeks ago. Every fleeting visual is, therefore, very important. Just as God is in the details of dressing, the darned Devil lives there as well.

What’s the Sensodyne success story? It is a ₹100-crore brand today, I hear.

Mumbai

Mahantesh, Sensodyne spotted the take-off-stage of a specific oral problem. The problem of sensitivity has been around for decades, but impatience with it came to the fore only recently. Further the ability of higher science to enter the realm of oral space to solve a problem was spotted and used to advantage. To an extent functionality and solution-centrality has overtaken the otherwise hollow USP development process in the oral hygiene category in recent years. This has not only helped Sensodyne but other brands in this category of sensitive gums to ramp up on volumes and value.

The brand's strength is its solution-centricity and its weakness is the temporal nature of this solution. But then, a toothpaste solution is like a bulb that will fuse some day or the other. If the bulb does not fuse ever, there is no future market for bulbs.

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