Bohemian Bronze meets Mumtaz Mahal

Once again, South Asian imagery finds its way into marketing campaign of a North American giant. This time, it's Elizabeth Arden. Since 2002, Catherine Zeta Jones has been the 'face' of Arden,' a publicly traded company pulling in over 700 million in retail sales. Look at her and the Mendhi imagery selling luxe fake tans and 'exotic' glows. Arden's other product this season is her MumTaz Mahal limited edition eye shadow compact.


Note to fashion editors: readers like me are sick of reading articles about how to get an even tan using a cream or bronzer. This over abundance of articles like this, along with the absence of brown models sends a message to your readers about who you are speaking to and for.

Seeing this Mehndi reminds me of a party I went to recently. It was my cousin's wedding anniversary and for fun, I took some Mendhi stamps along. I had hunted for those wooden stamps after paying five paise to a guy at the Kumbha Mela selling instant Mehndi. He looked like a shoe-shine walla but his kit included burgundy ink and stamps. After that I hunted for my own wooden stamps and found some in Calcutta and some more at the lively night market on the broad sidewalks of Colaba in South Bombay. I threw away the stinky permanent ink that comes with the kit and bought a skin safe brown-burgundy ink that washes off if you try and do the dishes.

At the party I pinned my cousin down, which was pretty hard to do, considering she was the host with three young children, and decorated her hand with lovely patterns of fake-henna (but then later, she did the dishes). Pretty soon I had a line-up of little South Asian girls with outsretched arms and upturned palms. Naturally, they wanted some too. I was only happy to oblige and it was only half way through that I, decidely not a parent, realized I should have asked permission of their parents. It hadn't occurred to me: I was using washable ink. But afterwards, a concerned parent came to me: She wanted to make sure the ink washed off. Her girls, who lived in fairly small town, had to attend summer camp this week--and she didn't want them to be distracted by their hands. I'm pretty sure she was also saying she didn't want the other camp kids to be distracted by her girl's differences.

All this takes me back to Zeta-Jones and others who wear this concept so proudly. She can after all. For her, it comes with no racist baggage. It is simply beautifully decorative. No worries about what the 'other kids' might think.

The special-edition eye-shadow compact by Arden is one of two "exotic" compacts that honours women of colour: one is of Queen Nefertiti, an African priestess (her image from the 1300's, left) and the other of MumTaz Mahal containing "velvet plum tones." A part of me wants this beautiful compact with an image of a strong South Asian woman on it. Another part resists the appropriation and manipulation of the legendary woman who inspired the Taj Mahal.

This led me on a journey into Mumtaz. Who was this woman? What captured the mind of Canadian born and raised Arden in the 1930's when she first commissioned this portrait, found again and used in this 2006 compact? And what about Jaques Guerlain? The French designer who in 1925 named his sweet and heady perfume after this legendary woman, Mumtaz Mahal. Guerlain's Shalimar perfume with scents of "lemon, bergamot, jasmine, rose, vanilla, iris and amber" is actually named after the Gardens of Shalimar, a place Mumtaz liked to go. The gardens were built in Lahore, Pakistan in the 1630's and if you like, you can see a virtual view from the terrace. Notes from Guerlain say: "Guerlain's most successful and enduring fragrance was created by Jacques Guerlain at a time when fascination with the orient was sweeping Europe.

Below, an artists depiction of Mumtaz from the 1630's. Notice her nose and hands: how different from Arden's rendition (above) which skips the nose ring, the henna on her hands, and her sharp nose.