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| Sunday, 26 October 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Cultural concerns : Fashion institute revamps policy The Managing Director of a leading fashion design school has advised its teachers and students to avoid religion as a source of inspiration for its design concepts, following a controversy caused by a collection presented at a recent show.
Roshani Leanage, Managing Director of Lanka Institute of Fashion Technology (LIFT) told the Sunday Observer that in future her students' design concepts would also require her personal approval before they went public. At the Institute's 2003 catwalk show held recently, one student's collection based on the "shapes of the dagoba" offended the show's compere Kumar de Silva to the point that he wrote to the editor of the Sunday Observer as well as to other national newspapers, expressing the view that it amounted to sacrilege. "I was appalled and stunned, and then fuming, when the collection opened with a model appearing on the catwalk dressed as a "dagoba", wrote Mr. De Silva. "She wore a white bell-shaped skirt at the bottom of which was affixed "floral offerings," a brief top with a "pinnacle" mounted atop her head. In her hand she carried a lit lamp. As she walked down the catwalk swaying her hips to the music, it looked as though a dagoba was walking towards the audience. I thought this was sickeningly horrendous and insulting to Buddhism." Mr. De Silva also states that many others in the audience too had been shocked and angry. Mrs. Leanage maintains that the student has not done anything wrong in merely drawing inspiration from the dagoba, and said she did not agree with Mr. De Silva that the creation amounted to sacrilege. "I will never do anything against my religion or country," she said, drawing attention to the fact that the school was called the Lanka Institute of Fashion Technology. "If Mr. De Silva had a problem with this concept he could have mentioned it to me earlier, as he saw the script in advance. Then we might have addressed the problem at the root," she said. Esha Wewala, the student who presented the "Dagoba" collection when contacted by the Sunday Observer said the particular outfit that caused offence to Mr. De Silva was the first of a set of four and was "not meant to be worn." "Only the dagoba shape was a source of inspiration. Perhaps Mr. De Silva got the wrong impression. I had no bad intention," she said. - LK |
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