Anant's blog: Boring is out

I’m a very conservative shopper when it comes to clothes. Shirts can be plain, striped or checked. Never loud. The limited colour palette is white, grey, brown and blue. Never loud. Socks (when I choose to wear them) are grey, brown, blue, white and black. No designs on them. Plain, thank you very much.

I don’t do ties.

Basically, I’m horribly boring when it comes to clothes.

And I get fascinated when I see aggressive male dressers.

Sonal Dabral, for one. Coloured hair, shirts so loud they break the sound barrier.

Bhaskar Das, for another. First was his phase of experimenting with his hair. All the colours of the rainbow. Then came his array of jackets and suits. In all the colours of the rainbow as well.

Dabral and Das carry off their clothes and their hairstyles with absolute panache.

They’re not alone.

Advertising and media abounds, now, with aggressive male dressers.

The pioneers were the guys with ponytails. If creatives in all agencies had the license (indeed, were expected) to dress in bizarre clothes and wear their hair in all kinds of styles, it’s when the suits crossed the line that life became interesting.

So Red FM’s Abe’s ponytail became a trademark. Bhaskar’s Sanjeev Kotnala first wore a ponytail and then a hair band.

Some of the early lot – not the creatives – went to the other extreme. No hair at all; shave it all off. That’s a style statement as well.

And in this business, no one cares and no one stares.

I do, actually, sometimes. As I did when I last met Sir Martin Sorrell and his socks were, if I remember right, green, orange, red and white. Horizontal stripes.

Socks of all hue and design. Making more of a statement than ties ever have.

Earrings and studs.

Lots of fashion statements to make and accessories to be bought.

One couldn’t imagine, ten years ago, that we’d have a product called Fair and Handsome. We do.

There’s a mountain of money in addressing the simple needs of the modern professional.

The next time I’m in Goa I’ll keep an eye out for coloured toenails.