The What Series: What We Wear

(From previous issue…)
Each of the renowned fashion houses existing today in France has its own spell-binding and awe-inspiring history. Names that were founded by those who did not have the means but the grit, audacity and vision to seize the moment. Francesca Cartier Brickell, the great-granddaughter of the founder, in her book The Cartiers: The Untold Story, traces her family history and documents the birth, growth and emergence of the brand. She writes that the founder, Louis-Francois Cartier, longed to have a formal education. However, after a basic level of schooling, pressed by circumstances, he had to start as an apprentice at an early age in the jewellery trade. At the age of twenty-eight, he took the daring step of buying the workshop belonging to his employer, who wanted to move his business to a more fashionable part of Paris. Hence, in 1848, the brand Cartier was officially born, going on to witness the Russian Revolution and survive two World Wars and the Great Depression, before seeing further expansion by Louis-Francois’s three grandsons across five continents. This expansion included catering to the whims and fancies of the Maharaja of Patiala, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja of Kapurthala in pre-independent India. In 1926 the Maharaja of Kapurthala is said to have commissioned Cartier, Paris, to make an emerald turban ornament comprising fifteen large emeralds from his own collection, which he wore to his golden jubilee the following year.
Louis Cartier, the eldest grandson of the founder, wanted to shake up the creative process and did not believe in hiring only trained jewellery designers. Instead, he populated his atelier with artistic experts from a host of fields. This team of inventors, as he called them, included lace makers, bronze sculptors, tapestry designers, architects, ironworkers and interior designers. Within a couple of years of Louis joining the family business, Cartier was starting to be known for its unique jewels. In 1914, with the declaration of World War I, a general mobilization was ordered amid a wave of patriotic fervour. Louis turned up at the Paris war office with his medical records, which showed that his right leg had been fractured in an accident six years earlier. He was, therefore, rendered incapable of fighting and was given a desk job in Bordeaux. Though his family thought that he was wasting his time in Bordeaux when he should have been looking after business interests that were expanding, it was during his stint in the military that the idea of Tank, one of the most iconic creations of the Cartier house was born. So, to me, to own a Tank is to own a piece of history and art.
This, even if I am to completely disregard and rubbish what Cartier’s advertisement agency or social media platforms tell me about the watch and what it can do. How wearing one will uplift anybody is bewildering. The question is whether a thing or a rock can define, refine, elevate, or dilute any human being when each one of us has been stamped by the Creator in His resemblance the ultimate and only definition of our intrinsic worth.
The disquiet, however, lies in the incidental emergence of a new class consciousness in Naga society, where the standard to qualify the wearer comes from doing what is wrong and disgraceful. Brandishing, and wearing unimaginable riches after having created an inequitable society through sheer abuse. The catastrophic consequence is that this class is breeding a new hunger, awe and greed unknown to our ancestors. This craving inspiring the new generation reeks of something that is rotten when juxtaposed with the destiny of the Nagas, who were chosen and called to be an aroma. I distinctly remember feeling embarrassed as a college student for being picked up in a worn-down, soft-roofed government-owned white Gypsy at the Dimapur airport while fancy cars swarmed to receive others. And then, later, reprimanding myself by questioning where my worth lies. If I truly regarded my father and what he did, I ought to have proudly walked up to that Gypsy without shame. Something within me and beyond me underwent a tectonic shift that day, both in my heart and in my mind. This is an on-going reminder for me: that our Provider, Validator and Judge is not from this planet.
What, then, will be the implication if the Nagas are called to apply the standards of our ancestors in modern-day society? Not everything from the past needs duplication. However, not everything needs to be discarded. What if there is a revival of the authentic Nagami pride by building on the foundation of a newfound identity as followers of the Light of the world? Where the old society order, of ridiculing the wrong and honouring the right, is restored. Cultivating a society where respect and development are earned and demanded and not sold or compromised respectively. Where both the seller and the buyer of self-respect are ex-communicated, and such a transaction publicly declared a nullity. I wonder if then there will be a day when a limited-edition jewel-encrusted Chopard worn by a wearer not worthy of it will start to look cheap and dirty.
(Concluded)
Ms. K. Enatoli Sema.
Advocate on Record.
Standing Counsel for the State of Nagaland,
Supreme Court of India.