Fashion gets Sonia Gandhi and Zidane too

New Delhi, Aug 31: If you think politics, football and fashion don't go together, think again.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and French footballer Zinedine Zidane were the subject of a quiz on fashion at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week here today conducted by quiz master Siddharth Basu.

The question put to fashion designing students from institutions like NIFT and NID was ''Who wove the pink cotton saree that Sonia Gandhi wore for her wedding?'' The answer: Jawaharlal Nehru! Surprised? The students and the audience were, of course.

The next question was ''Which footballer was the first male model for Christian Dior?'' and the answer was Zidane.

Another poser had the audience in giggles. ''What type of garment takes its name from one of the Marshall Islands in the Ralik Chain? No points for guessing the answer, bikini. Bikini, as Basu explained, is an atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific where an atom bomb was tested in 1946; the name takes it origin from the supposed 'explosive' effect.

And Bollywood also reverses its role as far as picking up the latest trends in fashion into films is concerned. Director Karan Johar designed the costume for Aditya Chopra's multi-starrer 'Mohabbatein'.

The famous diamond brand De Beer takes it name from two Afrikaner farmers in whose farms, located at the confluence of the Orange and the Vaal River, diamond was discovered in the 1880s. The farmers were Johannes Nicholas de Beer and Diederik Arnoldus de Beer. Hence De Beers.

The quiz was won by National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Bangalore students Sandhya Garg and Trisha Sakhilecha, both Delhiites. The second prize went to the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad team comprising Prasanjeet and Shivani. The third prize was won by Saurabh Banks and Akriti Mehra of NIFT, New Delhi.

The first prize winners took home a purse of Rs 10,000.

''It was a fifty-fifty performance by the students,'' said Basu.

''In terms of knowledge, they still haven't got there.''

UNI

Related Stories