The fashion industry in India has evolved exponentially, coming a long way from the one major Lakme Fashion Week organised by the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) to now hosting more than a dozen fashion weeks every year. Indian fashion and brands have surely gone global and business has never been better but these very frequent, multiple fashion weeks do make us question the integrity and quality of the art itself. Ramesh Dembla, noted fashion designer who recently showcased his collection in the just concluded Bangalore Fashion Week says, “Apart from the Lakme Fashion Week, Wills India Lifestyle Fashion Week and the Bangalore Fashion Week, I don’t see much credibility happening elsewhere. Fashion Weeks have become so commercialised today giving way only to big brands and show. Production wise no doubt it’s a good thing but quality should not suffer.”
A rift was created in the Indian fashion world in late 2005 when FDCI tripled their sponsorship fee and found a new production partner in IMG. Lakme then split up with them and started organising the Lakme Fashion Week in India, bringing in much glitz, glamour and media attention, which set it apart from its Delhi counterpart. Another new thing for which the Lakme Fashion Week was much applauded was that it allowed a lot of new and young fashion designers to showcase their works. It almost worked as a launch pad but with much talent and promise. The Bollywood connection was strongly roped in bringing in the whole new craze for front row tickets for the fashion shows.
Though now there was a clear divide in the fashion industry, several senior designers chose to appear at the ‘official’ fashion week being held in Delhi. It was the different companies and brands who faced a problem because they had to attend both the fashion weeks in order to be able to tap the complete market and for greater visibility. Designers also felt the need to appear at both the events to cater to the entire audience. This obviously led to a strain. Organisers and designers struggled to be able to meet the dates in both the cities, with work bordering on mediocrity. The standards were either stagnant or falling as collections started being shown without a clear sense of design and focus.
Veteran fashion designer Suneet Verma had commented that and overdose of these fashion weeks were localizing the market. Earlier there were a lot of international buyers for the garments. But the recent flurry of regional fashion weeks has stopped that. There are fashion weeks being held in Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur and there are even talks of having a Ludhiana Fashion Week. A customer in Jaipur will not come to attend the Fashion Week in the capital or in Mumbai because he has a fashion week in his own city. The city specific shows are largely client-oriented and therefore do not do much for the fashion industry as a whole. Even the launch of a store these has a gala fashion week planned ahead for it. The whole utility of these regional fashion weeks were slightly misjudged. It was great in terms that it made fashion more accessible to the local buyer but now with an unhealthy number of fashion weeks springing up every time the standards are surely falling and in return doing no good to the industry.
There are certain brands and businesses who have embraced this situation and using it in a commercial savvy way. Introduction of online purchase, sale through social networking site, and direct online streaming of shows have generated a lot of good business. The media frenzy too for these events has created a buzz. This situation is further helped by the strong Bollywood presence felt every time. Ramesh Dembla says, “Having a Bollywood personality for a show stopper every time does guarantee a packed audience and extensive media coverage but it has nothing to do with the collection. The work has to be good irrespective of the glitz surrounding it.” Nowadays most fashion designers have a retail label of their own and they manufacture small volumes of their collection right after their show to cash in on the interest created by the shows.
There is a brand or a logo everywhere you see in these fashion weeks. It’s a highly competitive market, with everyone vying for the customer’s attention, so this seems all right but sometimes it might border on distraction, laying too much focus on the sponsor rather than the work of the designer himself. At the DHL Future Fashion Show, promising new designers Kallol Dutta and Atsu Sekhose had been instructed by the organizers to draw inspiration from the DHL colours and show it in their creations. The fashion show which ensued was a matter of much talk and critique when the yellow and red garments appeared, bathed in yellow DHL light, under yellow and red DHL lanterns, making the entire event seem like a cheap gimmick. And this was done at the cost of two very talented upcoming designers.
Keeping the highly politicised fashion hierarchy of India aside if we just concentrate on the design aspect, things will keep working. Indian fashion has a huge market outside the country and there a lot of young designers paving the way for an optimistic future headed by stalwarts like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Manish Malhotra, Rina Dhaka, and several others. The Indian fashion industry would surely benefit from a single and strong fashion week instead of so many, to be able to showcase the talents of Indian fashionistas with much more pizzazz.
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