Features
Neon on the runaway this season
At the beginning of 2022, everything indicated neon colors — think Barbiecore hot pink, neon green, and bright orange — were serious contenders to headline fashion’s newest colour trend. If the myriad of brands — Balenciaga, Jacquemus, Off White, and more — introducing dopamine palettes on their catwalks was not enough of an indicator, stars including Kendall Jenner, Rihanna, and Billie Eillish were surely making a case for it. The trend might have not blown up back then, but in the seasons to follow, designers continued to send neon garments down the runway. The persistence paid off. Hot pink, has risen as the hottest colour of 2022 and by the looks of it, neon green will follow suit.
Highlighter green, lime, Prada’s “fern green,” chartreuse green, or yellow-green; call it as you wish, but it is undeniable that neon green is the new colour in town. From the runways around the world to our favorite stars, everybody is adhering to the latest “it” colour.
This sudden popularity surprises no one. In between the retro mania and Y2K revival, fluoro green has steadily gained traction. For example, brands such as Christian Siriano and Versace presented neon green suits, dresses, and matching sets in their 2022 fashion shows. Simultaneously, the likes of Prada and Dior embraced the color in more subtle ways, introducing details and accessories like handbags and shoes.
Couture and menswear have not fallen behind. In addition to hot pink, Pierpaolo Piccioli — who is also partly responsible for the Barbiecore craze — incorporated highlighter green in both of Valentino’s 2022 couture presentations. Meanwhile, during the Spring/Summer 2022 menswear season, Dior, Louis Vuitton, and MSGM injected a dose of dopamine with total neon looks and accessories such as bags, sunglasses, hats, and sneakers.
The major fashion capitals are not the only ones falling for neon green. Elsewhere, designers also set out to explore brightly colouured fashion. For instance, in Mexico, fashion designer Iván Avalos has been hinting at the neon trend since his ANNA Spring/Summer 2019 collection, which he recently reprised for a retrospective show at Intermoda. “Green is connected with nature. For us, neon green is life and diversity,” the designer tells Teen Vogue. Adhering to the trend, Avalos has also opted to include chartreuse makeup highlights in his latest lookbook.
During Copenhagen Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2022, Stine Goya and Saks Potts opened their shows with lime green outfits. The first was a faux-fur coat, styled with black combat boots; the second, a chartreuse green plunge-neck halter and blue pants that felt like an homage to the early aughts. Similarly, at the Afterpay Australian Fashion Week, Bondi Born presented the aptly titled “Phosphor” Summer and Resort 2023 collection, where the neon mania even reached the jelly shoes courtesy of CHARLES & KEITH.
Of course, the entertainment world has quickly caught up with the eye-catching color too. Following Beyoncé’s performance at the 2022 Oscars — where she wore a “verdant” David Koma dress — celebrities have made several appearances clad in neon hues. From Dua Lipa’s Balenciaga concert fit to Keke Palmer’s layered look, bright green outfits are making their way into every A-lister’s wardrobe. All products featured on Teen Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
At the beginning of 2019, everything indicated neon colors — think Barbiecore hot pink, neon green, and bright orange — were serious contenders to headline fashion’s newest colour trend. If the myriad of brands — Balenciaga, Jacquemus, Off White, and more — introducing dopamine palettes on their catwalks was not enough of an indicator, stars including Kendall Jenner, Rihanna, and Billie Eillish were surely making a case for it. The trend might have not blown up back then, but in the seasons to follow, designers continued to send neon garments down the runway. The persistence paid off. Hot pink, has risen as the hottest color of 2022 and by the looks of it, neon green will follow suit.
Highlighter green, lime, Prada’s “fern green,” chartreuse green, or yellow-green; call it as you wish, but it is undeniable that neon green is the new color in town. From the runways around the world to our favorite stars, everybody is adhering to the latest “it” colour.
– Glamour
Founded in 1600 as a trading enterprise, the English East India company gradually transformed into a colonial power.
By the late 18th Century, as it tightened its grip on India, company officials began commissioning Indian artists – many formerly employed by the Mughals – to create striking visual records of the land they were now ruling.
A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings, c. 1790 to 1835, an ongoing show in the Indian capital put together by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), features over 200 works that once lay on the margins of mainstream art history. It is India’s largest exhibition of company paintings, highlighting their rich diversity and the skill of Indian artists.
Painted by largely unnamed artists, these paintings covered a wide range of subjects, but mainly fall into three categories: natural history, like botanical studies; architecture, including monuments and scenic views of towns and landscapes; and Indian manners and customs.
“The focus on these three subject areas reflects European engagements with their Indian environment in an attempt to come to terms with all that was unfamiliar to Western eyes,” says Giles Tillotson of DAG, who curated the show.
“Europeans living in India were delighted to encounter flora and fauna that were new to them, and ancient buildings in exotic styles. They met – or at least observed – multitudes of people whose dress and habits were strange but – as they began to discern – were linked to stream of religious belief and social practice.”
Beyond natural history, India’s architectural heritage captivated European visitors.
Before photography, paintings were the best way to document travels, and iconic Mughal monuments became prime subjects. Patrons soon turned to skilled local artists.
Beyond the Taj Mahal, popular subjects included Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, Sheikh Salim Chishti’s tomb at Fatehpur Sikri (above), and Delhi’s Qutub Minar and Humayun’s Tomb.
The once-obscure and long-anonymous Indian artist Sita Ram, who painted the tomb, was one of them.
From June 1814 to early October 1815, Sita Ram travelled extensively with Francis Rawdon, also known as the Marquess of Hastings, who had been appointed as the governor general in India in 1813 and held the position for a decade. (He is not to be confused with Warren Hastings, who served as India’s first governor general much earlier.)
The largest group in this collection is a set of botanical watercolours, likely from Murshidabad or Maidapur (in present-day West Bengal).
While Murshidabad was the Nawab of Bengal’s capital, the East India Company operated there. In the late 18th century, nearby Maidapur briefly served as a British base before Calcutta’s (now Kolkata) rise eclipsed it.
Originally part of the Louisa Parlby Album – named after the British woman who compiled it while her husband, Colonel James Parlby, served in Bengal – the works likely date to the late 18th Century, before Louisa’s return to Britain in 1801.
“The plants represented in the paintings are likely quite illustrative of what could be found growing in both the well-appointed gardens as well as the more marginal spaces of common greens, waysides and fields in the Murshidabad area during the late eighteenth century,” writes Nicolas Roth of Harvard University.
“These are familiar plants, domestic and domesticated, which helped constitute local life worlds and systems of meaning, even as European patrons may have seen them mainly as exotica to be collected.”
Another painting from the collection is of a temple procession showing a Shiva statue on an ornate platform carried by men, flanked by Brahmins and trumpeters.
At the front, dancers with sticks perform under a temporary gateway, while holy water is poured on them from above.
Labeled Ouricaty Tirounal, it depicts a ritual from Thirunallar temple in Karaikal in southern India, capturing a rare moment from a 200-year-old tradition.
By the late 18th Century, company paintings had become true collaborations between European patrons and Indian artists.
Art historian Mildred Archer called them a “fascinating record of Indian social life,” blending the fine detail of Mughal miniatures with European realism and perspective.
Regional styles added richness – Tanjore artists, for example, depicted people of various castes, shown with tools of their trade. These albums captured a range of professions – nautch girls, judges, sepoys, toddy tappers, and snake charmers.
“They catered to British curiosity while satisfying European audience’s fascination with the ‘exoticism’ of Indian life,” says Kanupriya Sharma of DAG.
Most studies of company painting focus on British patronage, but in south India, the French were commissioning Indian artists as early as 1727.
A striking example is a set of 48 paintings from Pondicherry – uniform in size and style – showing the kind of work French collectors sought by 1800.
One painting (above) shows 10 men in hats and loincloths rowing through surf. A French caption calls them nageurs (swimmers) and the boat a chilingue.
Among the standout images are two vivid scenes by an artist known as B, depicting boatmen navigating the rough Coromandel coast in stitched-plank rowboats.
With no safe harbours near Madras or Pondicherry, these skilled oarsmen were vital to European trade, ferrying goods and people through dangerous surf between anchored ships and the shore.
Company paintings often featured natural history studies, portraying birds, animals, and plants – especially from private menageries.
As seen in the DAG show, these subjects are typically shown life-size against plain white backgrounds, with minimal surroundings – just the occasional patch of grass. The focus remains firmly on the species itself.
Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG says the the latest show proposes company paintings as the “starting point of Indian modernism”.
Anand says this “was the moment when Indian artists who had trained in courtly ateliers first moved outside the court (and the temple) to work for new patrons”.
“The agendas of those patrons were not tied up with courtly or religious concerns; they were founded on scientific enquiry and observation,” he says.
“Never mind that the patrons were foreigners. What should strike us now is how Indian artists responded to their demands, creating entirely new templates of Indian art.”
[BBC]
Questions continue to be speculated about the true intentions of the JVP in orchestrating the NPP government – whether the JVP is still committed to its old Marxist-Leninist policies and whether it may or may not implement them through its NPP front. Further, will the JVP/NPP allow Sri Lanka’s multi-party democracy to continue or resort to one party governance like in countries where a Communist Party is in power. The fact that local government elections were held under an NPP government after a seven year hiatus is conveniently forgotten. That the LG elections had previously been postponed and cancelled by non-Marxist governments is now never mentioned.
And then the scaremongering – if the NPP government were to fail and suffer defeat at the next election, will it pave the way for the return of the Rajapaksas, yet again, but this time under a new generation led by the supposedly hugely talented Namal Rajapaksa? There were pre-election predictions that Namal Rajapaksa and the rump that is left of the SLPP might overtake Sajith Premadasa’s SJB in the LG elections. That did not happen.
The Rajapaksa scion is still safely in third place by quite a distance after the SJB and its lackluster leader, the slightly older but still the only young Premadasa in Sri Lankan politics. For company, they have a really old man, i.e., Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is capable of many things, but gracefully retiring is not one of them. At least, and to his credit, he lives in his own house and takes no residential perk at government expense unlike all the other ex-presidential freeloaders.
Philistine Preoccupations
It is not unfair to say that most of their commentaries are nothing but philistine preoccupations passing for serious politics. The word ‘philistine’ was a favourite term of Engels (the second fiddle to Marx’s first violin) and it is appropriate now since Marxism is at the tip of the tongue of everyone who wants to take a shot at the NPP government. The term is also apt to fling at the right wing populists, who are now becoming less popular in their western backyards thanks to their greatest specimen – Donald J. Trump
And what a specimen Trump is constantly devolving into – the latest stage being his disgusting White House encounter last Wednesday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Less said of it is better for your bile and if you saw it on television you would have instantly noticed the difference between a contemptible mammon out of Florida and a consummate statesman from Soweto.
As epithets are flung around to capture the antics of Trump, the latest comes from the usually measured Paul Krugman, distinguished American economist who was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for his work on “trade patterns and location of economic activity.” Krugman knows something about tariffs and economics, and the other day he called Trump and his sidekicks “sadistic zombies”.
Many among the Sri Lankan opposition politicians might be considered zombies, but none of them could be thought of as being sadistic. To close this loop on Trump and his dystopic global presence, one needs to acknowledge his primeval effectiveness in pushing people around to get his way. More so with foreign leaders than his opponents at home. But he uses this effectiveness to feed his ego and enrich his family and not at all to make a difference in the world’s trouble spots where the American government has more sway than anyone else.
This was quite evident on Trump’s recent visit to the Arab world that was all about glitter and one-way gifts including a flying palace, and nothing at all for American foreign policy, let alone for the wretched of the earth in Gaza or the slow burning of Ukraine. One noticeable fact of the visit was Trump’s deliberate snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Not only did Trump go to Riyad and Doha bypassing Jerusalem but he also sent a message to Netanyahu that he would deal directly with Netanyahu’s enemies including Hamas, Iran and the Houthis. To what great outcome, no one knows. At the same time, Trump’s apparent sidelining of Netanyahu together with the joint condemnation of Netanyahu’s latest Gaza plans by Britain, France and Canada, seemed to tighten the screws on Netanyahu and signaled a new opportunity for reining in Israel’s runaway leader and his notoriously right wing government.
All that came crashing down with the insane assassination, on Wednesday, of two young Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington by a lone gunman, 30 year old Chicago native Elias Rodriguez, shouting “Free, free, Palestine”. All that this politically deranged individual has achieved is to free Netanyahu to go ahead with his Gaza plans and to prolong the misery of the Palestinians who are under constant bombardment in Gaza.
Sri Lanka’s Durable Political System
Today’s Sri Lanka is fortunate to have finally come out of its own decades of political violence, and after several missed opportunities following the end of the war in 2009, the country finally has a government that for its all its inexperience in governing has shown consistent commitment to honesty, decency and transparency. Yet many commentators are rankled by the irony that a government whose political progenitor was a violent insurrectionist could now be a paragon of multi-party democracy.
Their constant allusion to Marxism is really a code for recalling the JVP’s violent past. Never mind that the past had come and gone 30 and 50 years ago. They conveniently ignore the possibility that the JVP could have and may actually have transformed itself from its pre-history to its current manifestation. Its current commitment to the parliamentary system and multi-party democracy is no less authentic than any of the other political parties. If at all, the JVP/NPP is more honest about it than every other party.
As well, those who agonize that the JVP might terminate Sri Lanka’s muti-party democracy and opt for some version of the political systems in countries such as Vietnam, China, Russia or even Cuba, fail to take into account the history and the currency of Sri Lanka’s political system that has proved to be quite durable, so much so that any political party that that tries to subvert or supplant it will do so at its own peril. And Sri Lanka’s political system, its history and currency are not comparable to what are prevalent in the four countries that I have mentioned.
The governing parties in these countries have been in power for as long as their polities have been existing, and they have no reason to think of changing their respective mode of government now or later. In contrast, the JVP/NPP government has come to power through the electoral process, and it has no incentive to think of changing that process now or later. Sri Lanka’s political system has not been without ailments, and the most debilitating of them has been the presidential system. And the JVP/NPP is the only political organization in the country that is fervently committed to curing Sri Lanka of that enervating illness. Whether it will keep its promise and succeed in changing the executive presidency is a different matter. It is the only party that is committed to changing the presidency, whereas all the others have tried to use it to serve their own ends.
Indian Comparisons
What is more comparable for Sri Lanka is the experience of the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal where the Indian Communists have won power through the electoral process on many occasions and acquitted themselves very well in government. In modern Kerala’s first state election in 1957, EMS Namboodiripad led the then undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) to electoral victory and a new government. That was India’s first elected Communist Government, and the world’s second – after the first elected Communist government (1945-1957) in San Marino, the tiny commune of a country in the Italian peninsula.
But the government was dismissed in 1959 by the Central Government at the insistence of a young Indira Gandhi using her influence as the President of the Congress Party, even sidelining her father and then Prime Minister Nehru. But Communists have become a governing force in Kerala forming several governments over the years led by the CPM (the Communist Party of India – Marxist), the larger of the two factions that emerged after the Party’s ideological split in 1964. The current government in Kerala is the government of the Left Democratic Front that is led by the CPM. The LDF has been in power since 2016 – winning two consecutive elections, a feat not achieved in 40 years.
In West Bengal, the CPM was in power continuously for 34 years from 1977 to 2011. Jyoti Basu of national prominence was Chief Minister from 1977 to 2000 and is recognized as the longest serving Chief Minister in India. In 1996, he was offered the chance to become India’s Prime Minister as head of a United Front alliance of non-Congress and non-BJP parties. But the great Bengali declined the offer in deference to his Party Polit Bureau’s lamebrained doctrinaire decision barring him from becoming Prime Minister in a coalition government. Unlike in Kerala, the CPM has not been able to alternate in government after its defeat in 2011. The Party was decimated in the 2021 national and State elections in West Bengal by Trinamool Congress a state-level party like Tamil Nadu’s DMK.
What the JVP/NPP has achieved in Sri Lanka is unique to Sri Lanka and, comparable to the Indian situations, the NPP’s electoral success poses no threat to the political system in Sri Lanka. The NPP government has completed only six months in office, but its critics are insistent on seeing results. They will not bother to look at what the present government’s predecessors respectively did in the first six months after elections in 2010, 2015 and 2019. At the same time, while is still too early for substantial results, it is getting late enough to get by without showing some work in progress, let alone some tangible achievements. It is about time.
by Rajan Philips
Book review
I was pleasantly surprised to receive recently, from Shashikala Premawardhane, Sri Lanka High Commissioner in Singapore at the time, a volume that commemorated half a century of diplomatic ties between the two countries. Entitled Singapore and Sri Lanka at 50: Perspectives from Sri Lanka, it had been published in 2023. The High Commissioner had handed over the editing of the book to two Sri Lankans and a Singaporean, who had chosen a range of topics to cover.
I was struck by the fact that I knew just four of the contributors, with a nodding acquaintance with two Foreign Service members who had contributed. I think this was because the work had been entrusted to younger writers and scholars, with particular interest in the fields they covered. So, it was just three of the economists, and reliable Prof Amal Jayawardane whom I knew, the latter from our time together on the Board of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.
It surprised me that we had only established diplomatic relations 50 years ago, but as the then Foreign Secretary put it, the relationship went back for well over a century before that, practically to the time when Singapore was established by Sir Stamford Raffles. The first section of the book records the many emigrants from here, who established themselves in business and professions, with several senior Singaporean politicians having Sri Lankan roots. There is much too about the Amarasuriya family which married into B.P. de Silva’s, who had set up the iconic B P de Silva jewellery firm, and also about doctors and lawyers.
I did however miss mention of the first Supreme Court judge from Sri Lanka, Justice Kulasekeram, who had worked for many years in Colombo and was then put on the Supreme Court when he migrated to Singapore by Chief Justice Sir Alan Rose. Rose, it may be remembered, had been Attorney General here and then Chief Justice, but was forced to leave by Sir John Kotelawala for his role in promoting Dudley Senanayake as Prime Minister when D S died suddenly.
But this section, on Historical and Social Relations, also has an incisive article by one of our brighter young diplomats, Madhuka Wickramaarachchi, about Singapore’s Language Policy, which has contributed so effectively to nation building whereas our selectivity has been so destructive of national unity. Without preaching, Madhuka makes clear how much we can learn, and that it is not too late to change our focus.
The second section, about Economic and Investment relations, begins with an article that is essentially about Prima. Following a long relationship with this country after it was established in Singapore in 1961, Prima was an early example of the Foreign Direct Investment the Jayewardene government encouraged from 1977. Having come in then, it has expanded over the years and now provides much employment in this country.
The next two chapters in this section are primarily about the new opportunities opened up by the relatively recent Sri Lanka Singapore Free Trade Agreement, and there is much detail about what has happened and what could happen, though I cannot comment on all this since it is not an area I know much about.
But I should note that I would have welcomed more attention to the work of a firm that came in nearly half a century back, the Overseas Realty Group which built the World Trade Centre, and then started work on Havelock City and persisted, despite the various problems this country faced. I believe they are a byword for integrity, which perhaps explains why this country has not taken more advantage of their predilection for investment here.
The third section, on Perspectives on Security and Counter Terrorism, is also something I know little about, though I found the account of the cooperation in this field of the two countries interesting, and also how information has been shared with regard to combating terrorism, with Singapore having links with other countries that enables it to be a helpful resource for less sophisticated countries like ours.
And the last chapter in this section highlights something we need to take seriously, the need for better coordination with regard to what is described as security architecture, and not only with regard to cyber security which is the focus of this piece. The sad story of what happened in 2018, before the Easter bombings, makes clear how destructive our failure to coordinate – and not only with regard to security – can be.
The next section of Diplomacy and Multilateralism lays out clearly the opportunities we missed when we might have joined ASEAN when it was set up. This was initially because of Dudley Senanayake’s worries about what seemed its pro-American tilt. Later, when Ranasinghe Premadasa was keen to renew dialogue, we were told to go away, but I suspect this was in part because J R Jayewardene and the foreign policy dispensation was not too keen on the sort of innovations Premadasa advocated.
Interestingly, after Amal Jayawardane’s piece on the need for closer cooperation with ASEAN, there is a fascinating article about cooperation during the pandemic, which suggests we could take this dimension further. The same goes for the area explored in the last section, on Environment and Climate Change. The first article there draws attention to the need to look at Climate Change in terms of a National Security Issue, and suggests areas of common concern to both our island states.
And fascinating was the last article in the book on Wetland Conservation, which draws attention to an area in which we can easily do more work, and cooperate with Singapore on productive initiatives. In this context I am saddened that a project which I am told Ruwan Wijewardene had supported when in the President’s Office to renew mangrove cover has now floundered, because no one in the Prime Minister’s Office, where the proposal now rests, has the energy or the will to take it further.
I don’t suppose anyone in the Prime Minister’s office has read this admirable book, but it is a pity that those in charge of policy are not encouraged to do so, both there and in the President’s office, and to look at the many ideas for future development that the book suggests.
Singapore and Sri Lanka at 50: Perspectives from Sri Lanka
an anthology reviewed by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
India’s colonial past revealed through 200 masterful paintings
Showers above 75 mm are likely at some places in Western and Sabaragamuwa provinces and in Galle, Matara, Nuwara-Eliya and Kandy districts.
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