Fashion faux pas

Working men who live in labour camps are not fashion icons, and it was wrong of a French fashion house to try to fit them for that role.

French photographer Philippe Chancel broke a stereotype when he turned down what surely would have been a lucrative connection with a high-end French fashion house.

The unnamed company wanted to use Mr Chancel's latest work, photos of workmen on job sites and in housing camps in the UAE, as inspiration for a new fashion line. To his credit, he declined.

The grandees of the world's fashion industry do sometimes claim, implausibly, that they get their inspiration from the "street style" of so-called ordinary people. But the idea of pretending that workmen are fashion icons carries an unpleasant whiff of condescension.

To be sure, high-end fashion, at tens of thousands of dirhams per garment, is not aimed at even the middle class, let alone labour camp residents who send home part of humble earnings each month.

Mr Chancel's photos (some of which appeared in The National on Tuesday) reflect the humble dignity of labour, showing workers with heads shielded from the sun and also familiar scenes of men in overalls resting in the shade. His new book of such photos promises to be visually striking as photojournalism while respecting his subjects.

But the fashion house which proposed to trivialise these men would, with its superior approach, only have made itself ridiculous.