To add that extra dash and sparkle to your fine dining experience, simply sprinkle some gold or silver dust. While we in India have been using gold/silver ‘virks’ on our ‘mithai’ for eons, it is a novel concept in the west, introduced in a marketable format by the Spanish brand Golden International Distribution called Orogourmet, that provides the two noble metals, silver and gold as edible dust, flakes or sheet, to add that delicate visual sparkle to your dish. Don’t expect any change in taste though.

Mail order couture from Rent the Runway

This is a good example of an oxymoron. An exclusive designer dress for the high end consumer being put out for hire; now why would any true celebrity want to buy that label where there is the risk of it showing up on anybody (read a nobody), anywhere, any number of times! But the scheme is up and running and doing very well (yet) thank you. Rent the Runway is a nascent Web site that makes it possible to rent exclusive and expensive designerwear and is founded by Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Carter Fleiss, two recent Harvard Business School graduates. Yet in testing phase, they promise dresses from designers such as Diane Von Furstenberg, Hervé Léger and Proenza Schouler The rental of $50-$200 is for four-nights and the dress is shipped to the customer’s home along with a prepaid envelope for return. Dry cleaning is included in the price but damage insurance of $5 is extra. Total destruction of dress results in full retail price payment. Many other add ons, such as extra size of a first dress included free, on-call stylists to advise on feel of certain materials and how it would drape on certain body types, a fit-kit to make quick adjustments and a deo stain remover. Most designers are selling their outfits directly to the service and some are giving unsold runway pieces in exchange for a cut. Designers are optimistic about their label reaching a larger audience and hoping it may result in direct sale.
The skeptics are wondering if this set up will be able to keep up with the changing seasons and trends.

London’s very own - the Notting Hill Carnival, true to the spirit of a carnival held anywhere else, this one too is infused with the general mood of bonhomie, music, masquerade parades, floats and amazing food. The city of London virtually turns into a huge party venue where people come from afar to participate in all the revelry.

What sets it apart from the other well known carnivals such as the Carnivale di Venezia or the Venice Carnival, Mardi Gras or ‘Fat Tuesday’ in New Orleans, Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival in Spain, the famous Goa carnival etc is that it is held during the August Bank Holiday, which is the last weekend of the month. Carnivals elsewhere, whenever they may start, end on Fat Tuesday, just before Ash Wednesday (25th February this year), which marked the beginning of the fasting season of Lent,. The word Carnival is taken from Latin and translates as ‘to take away meat’. On the other hand, the Notting Hill carnival was started more as a social initiative on 30th January, 1959 by Claudia Jones to erase the memory of the 1956 racial riots involving the British African-Caribbean community in Notting Hill, which broke out in the last two weeks of August. It was held at the St Pancras Town Hall and was televised by the BBC. Its huge success resulted in increased number of participants and hence was moved outdoors and rescheduled to August in 1965. In 1976 and a few subsequent years, the carnival was marred by violence between the Caribbean youth and the Police but subsequent support from such as Prince Charles has made the event trouble free and today nearly one million people participating in it.

The Notting Hill 2009 carnival was held on the last three days of August with the main parade being held on the final day of 31st August, the theme for this year being ‘horror films’. Since the event at its inception had the driving force of the Black immigrants from the Caribbean, particularly from Trinidad, the musical traditions of that region have become a significant part. The carnival now comprises six disciplines: Mas' (masquerade), Steel band, Calypso, Soca, Static Sound Systems, and Samba. No fair is complete without a healthy food stall within reach and hundreds of Caribbean food stalls, selling barbequed corn, sugar cane and jerk chicken do brisk business. The first day kicks off with a steel band competition held in Hyde Park and subsequently over the rest of the days music dominates and drowns out all other sound.

For those of us planning to visit this party, it would be good to know a little about the Caribbean music that is the soul of the event and what better to start with than Soca, which originated as fusion of Calypso and Indian rhythms, taken from the musical traditions of the two major ethnic groups of Trinidad and Tobago. It was started around 1973 in Trinidad by Lord Shorty (Garfield Blackman who was 6ft 4 inches tall) who thought to resuscitate the dying calypso by combining the sounds of Indian percussion instruments like tabla, dholak and dhantal. His first soca song, ‘Indrani’ became a huge hit and the style caught on. The first soca album, Endless Vibrations, also uses the chant ‘Om Shanti’, in the chorus line. Over the years Soca music has evolved with other rhythms being incorporated and such versions as Rapso, Chutney Soca, Ragga Soca and Parang Soca, using variously a fusion of Chutney musicians, Eastern Carribean dialect hip-hop, Jamaican Dancehall, Calypso and Latino music. At the carnival, the bands accompanying the masquerade costume parade play soca and are often referred to as 'Soca on the Move'.

Calypso was born on the sugar plantations of Trinidad, as an expression of the suppressed thoughts of the enslaved Africans who resorted to singing to fulfill their need to communicate against the oppressive presence of the colonisers. It is said to be a version of West African ‘Kaiso’ singing. The singing is led by one individual called a Griot, who helped to unite the slaves through their lyrics, which were laden with political content. It is also said that there is an influence of the music styles of rapidly changing colonial masters from France, Spain and Britain. Veteran calypsonian Rafael de Leon has written that the Calypso beats descend from the music of medieval French troubadours. But the Trinidadians, since a hundred years ago, have been using calypso as a sure way of spreading news. So much so that the islanders trusted the lyrics of the calypso song to be a more reliable source as they spoke about and against political corruption. The British Colonial masters even imposed a censorship on the songs.

At carnival time, the streets of Notting Hill are lined with pans or steel bands and the air reverberates with their rhythm. Technically a steel band’s drum is a percussion instrument that is not a drum but a pan since it is of the idiophone family of instruments. However since the instrument in made from 55 gallon steel drums used to store oil, the term ‘drum’ is often used. The steel band has been described as follows – ‘A steel band consists of metal oil drums cut to different depths, with the flat top divided into sections which are hammered and tempered to give wide range of notes when struck with the rubber-knobbed end of a short stick. It is possible to play any type of music on these percussion instruments.’ The history of its origin traces it back to a carnival percussion group called Tamboo Bamboo in early 20th century in Trinidad & Tobago. A pair of straight sticks tipped with rubber is used to hit the steel pans to create sound. This steel band or pan is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Brazilian dance and music genre called Samba is almost synonymous with the Carnival spirit where exotically attired dancers with elaborate feathered headgear sway sensuously to the beats of the samba. With African and European roots, it was born and developed in Rio de Janeiro around the end of the 19th century. The former slaves who were migrants from Bahia practiced this dance form and slowly incorporated other genres such as polka, maxixe, lundu etc. In 2007 the Samba was declared a Cultural Heritage of Brazil.

The Notting Hill carnival area is surrounded by static sound systems with nearly 40 speakers that belt out Reggae, RnB, Samba, Salsa, Soca, Calypso, Hip Hop and anything else that the DJ fancies. Dance, sway, sing, binge and generally have all the fun, since there is no escaping any of these at the Nottinghill Carnival. The only reminder to the violence that once resulted in the launch of this carnival is the presence of a posse of policemen all around that are ready to snuff out even a slightest hint of trouble.

Didier Grumbach, president Federation Francaise de la couture, du prêt a porter des couturiers et des createurs de mode, was spotted taking a keen interest in the goings on at Pragati Maidan Hall No 7, the venue for the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week spring-summer 2010 season, where he was the chief guest. He attended quite a few shows across the five day event. We at Newsvision were keen to find out what the man who heads the ultimate fashion organization, find interesting about our designs and designers. It was Rajesh Pratap Singh, Anamika Khanna and Manish Arora’s works that he saw in Paris that brought him out here in 2006 first time. He was all praise for Rajesh Pratap, “Rajesh Pratap Singh has a European way of presenting and his quality of finish and detailing is amazing,” though he did feel that his work was aimed at couture and not prêt. He likened Rahul Mishra to Sonia Rykiel, the French designer who was the first with the reversed seam, but the praise came with a word of advice, “..he must decide whether he wants to express himself or make money.” He made a similar comment about Manish Arora, whose sense of humour he likes but felt that he may not earn commercial success if he kept up with his existing designing track. He said, “Manish Arora must use his Indian identity positively, if he wants to make a name for himself worldwide.” When asked about Japanese designers as against Indian designers, he had this to say, “No doubt Japanese designers have made an impact on world fashion but although Japanese fashion changed the image of the country and gave it an haute couture image with names like Issey Miyake, Hana Mori, Yoji Yamamoto that does not mean that Japanese fashion exists internationally. Similarly Indian fashion will be known in the world but it will not exist internationally as a style or concept which women will follow forever.” That was good to know. Let us not harbor any illusions; the designers are yet rooted to the Mother Land in their design sensibilities and that means the chunk of the buyers are local.