Akshay Kumar, one of India’s most successful film stars, saw his latest movie, Blue — a tale set underwater, not under bedclothes — debut last week with much fanfare. Not only does the 42-year-old Bollywood action hero appear in the most expensive Hindi film yet made, but the movie also co-stars Kylie Minogue, whose main contribution to the storyline is performing a dubious musical number called Chiggy Wiggy. In case you wondered, Blue is not directed by Ken Loach.

But more spectacular than the highoctane musical numbers, even more eye-popping than the sight of Minogue’s pert bottom wiggling wickedly to the bhangra beat, is Kumar’s taste-defying array of outfits — both on and off screen. Google Kumar and a picture gallery of some of the most unappetising outfits worn by modern man will unfold before your eyes: there’s oversized sunglasses that he appears to have borrowed from Mrs Beckham, day-glo hoodies stolen from Kanye West, slogan T-shirts à la Henry Holland, and lots of shiny, torso-revealing accessories that remind one just a little bit too much of Daffyd from Little Britain.

To be fair, Kumar, a former model, is in very good shape for a fortysomething Bollywood veteran, and while this means that he can arguably get away with certain ensembles that many men his age would have to avoid at all costs, his enthusiasm for the latest fashions — particularly ones that involve shiny bits attached to them — sadly make him a strong contender for the world’s worst-dressed men list.

Like many of his contemporaries in the West, Kumar likes to sport the latest looks shown on the catwalks of Paris and Milan; looks that are usually modelled by skinny prepubescents with no hips, wrinkles and zero body-fat. Styles that just about make the grade on teenagers in Hoxton or Berlin, but look, well, a teensy-bit Zoolander on anyone with a normal girth over the age of 18 — especially when, like Kumar, they are overly fond, and worryingly good, at recreating Ben Stiller’s Blue Steel poses.

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• Pictures: the fashions of Akshay Kumar

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Not that Kumar is big on irony. He may have swapped his action-hero roles for more comedy parts recently, but in interviews he takes himself and his profession very seriously, and however goaded he might be by his interviewers, refuses ever to utter anything controversial. Mystifyingly, his sense of style is never questioned.

Nor has it put off the girls: Kumar dated a string of beauties, including the former Celebrity Big Brother contestant Shilpa Shetty, before settling down with his rather beautiful wife, aptly named Twinkle. The couple were once cautioned by the police after Twinkle was spotted undoing the fly of Kumar’s jeans at a fashion show. At the time, they were accused of lewd behaviour in public; in retrospect it was more likely that Twinkle was simply trying to get rid of the trousers.

Of course, film stars have always felt the need to present an unattainable image of glamour and other-worldiness; to sell a dream that we can all aspire to. The Hollywood studios were perhaps the first to realise the advantage of presenting their stars as mythical, god-like creatures, and this filtered down to the music industry, where pop and rock stars would appear in fantastic creations that nobody in their right mind would dream of wearing to buy a pint of milk (think Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson). Today, the baton has been passed to our sports stars: just look at Cristiano Ronaldo, with his gold chains, fluorescent T-shirts and Tango orange tan.

Over the past decade there has, of course, been something of a glamour backlash, with many of the younger generation of celebrities rejecting the whole glitz game. While they’ll still happily don black tie for events such as the Oscars, the rest of the time they try very hard to dress like us; actually, to dress like us on a Sunday morning with a bad hangover.

How often do we see today’s stars — particularly the male ones — papped at airports and nightclubs looking unshaven, wearing dirty jeans, scruffy trainers and head-hiding hoodies? Even the young princes when photographed tripping out of Boujis, Mahiki or Whisky Mist at three in the morning are usually dressed down in baggy jeans, untucked cotton shirts and a garish friendship bracelet — a far cry from the days when Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon would be snapped leaving the Café de Paris in their evening finery.

What we have today are two extremes with very little in between: we have the shiny, honed, pumped, primped, bling-bling brigade, such as Kumar or Victoria Beckham, who feel naked unless they are practically naked (save for the odd designer label, metallic accessory and layer of lip gloss), and the hobo clan, starring the Olsen twins and Josh Hartnett, who dress as if their main source of income is holding out a paper cup next to the local cash machine.

So which look do we want from our stars today? Do we want aspirational glamour that for a few moments takes us away from the humdrum of our everyday lives, a turbulent economy and Kerry Katona’s mind-numbing antics, or do we want the satisfaction of knowing that Hollywood’s hotshots might earn a fortune and yet, bank balances aside, they still have to shave, deal with pimples and remember to wash’n’go?

The trouble is that both these approaches are, in their own way, utterly contrived. And although they always were, we are now far more aware of the fact. Because of the plethora of celebrity weeklies and style monthlies we now know that the glamour set spend hours in the gym, fortunes on stylists and weeks in plastic surgery hospitals to achieve their oh-so-perfect look, which rather lessens its appeal. In the same vein, we know that the celebrity hobos buy their jeans ready “dirtied” from Harvey Nichols, that their hoodies cost a fortune in Japan and the vintage-look boots were a gift from Marc Jacobs.

No, what we need today are more originals — people who don’t give a damn, characters who look a bit crazy not because they saw it in a window in Bond Street but that’s just what they like to wear. We want men and women who are dressed as they are, however peculiar they might look to the rest of us, because that’s what they saw and liked in the mirror that morning. It’s the true nonconformists, untamed by professional image-makers, we should admire.

Just look at Mickey Rourke. His dress sense is incomprehensible: how on earth does he dream up those extraordinary mismatched ensembles? But hats off to him for doing so. The same with Nick Nolte, another Hollywood odd-bod, who’s fond of including pyjamas in his daily wardrobe; and full marks to Helena Bonham-Carter, who always looks as if she’s just escaped from the set of one of her director boyfriend Tim Burton’s movie sets.

And if you pop down to Carnaby Street or Shoreditch in London these days, you will see a whole new generation who have decided to ignore convention, fashion diktats and peer pressure.

Kumar, who is famous for performing many of the death-defying stunts in his films, is perhaps unaware that the bravest stunt he undertakes is the one when he opens his wardrobe each morning. Since neither you nor I would have the guts to step out of the door wearing what he does, we should applaud him for such valour.

As Diana Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor of the Forties and Fifties, proclaimed: “I’m a great believer in vulgarity — if it’s got vitality... We all need a splash of bad taste — it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. No taste is what I’m against.”

Jeremy Langmead is Editor of Esquire magazine

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