Bandana Tewari | Photo: Johan Sandberg for Industrie Magazine

PARIS, France — Bandana Tewari has made a name for herself as one of the fashion industry’s smartest commentators. As fashion features director of Vogue India, she has quickly become the go-to source for anyone who wants to learn about the country’s rapidly evolving luxury market. Recently, she was named to Industrie magazine’s Fashion Media A-list, alongside other leading fashion commentators including Cathy Horyn, Tim Blanks and Suzy Menkes.

So, I am delighted to reveal that Bandana Tewari will pen a regular column for The Business of Fashion, offering her unique perspective on the Indian luxury market, starting with this interview originally conducted for Industrie.

I sat down with Bandana in between shows during Paris Fashion Week in September to talk about India’s fast growing fashion market, tailoring luxury products to Indian sensibilities, the power of Bollywood and wearing Tarun Tahiliani saris with Manolo Blahniks.

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Front Row at Lakmé Fashion Week | Photo: BoF

MUMBAI, India – From the minute I landed in Bombay—as everyone here still calls it—the rapidly shifting nature of contemporary India was apparent. Instead of waiting in agonisingly long queues at the airport, I breezed through immigration, customs and bag collection in only 45 minutes. That’s faster than one can make it through most terminals at Heathrow or JFK these days.

Outside the airport, cranes building a new terminal towered over those waiting with signs to pick up arriving international passengers with names like Padamsee and Singh, but also Takahashi and Levine, signs of the globalisation that is quickly transforming this city into an international melting pot.

The last time I attended a fashion week in India was five years ago, so when IMG kindly invited me to attend this season’s Lakmé Fashion Week, I was curious to see how things had changed. With GDP growth racing along at a blistering 8 percent per year, and a growing sense of national pride, there were bound to be changes in India’s fashion business landscape as well.

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LONDON, United Kingdom and MUMBAI, India – Over dinner at Milan Fashion Week last February, I got to talking to Bandana Tewari, Fashion Features Director of Vogue India, about the renewed energy in London fashion. Naturally, her first question was what Indian designers were doing to contribute to the London scene, particularly as India continues to emerge for a centre for world-class design.

The result of our conversation is this Vogue India article on Indian designers based in London. While writing the piece, I got to know three Indian designers with three amazing stories, each of which started in India and subsequently took them all over the world, until they finally ended up in London.

Between them, Ashish Gupta, Saloni Lodha and Aseef Vaza have lived and worked in Toronto, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Florence, Paris and New York — bringing quintessentially cosmopolitan energy to London’s design and fashion community.

While China may have the unyielding focus of many Western luxury brands today, many players are already beginning to set their sights on India for the next wave of expansion. But, as global luxury players begin to tentatively test these Indian waters, they are finding that India, which has its own vibrant indigenous cultural scene, may require a different expansion strategy altogether.

With Bollywood stars and local Cricket legends that get more attention in India than their Western cultural equivalents, there is no blank canvas in India upon which to paint Western tastes. Locals on the streets of Shanghai and Beijing have, by and large, adopted Western dress, but those in Delhi and Mumbai  are more likely to fuse East and West; a Tarun Tahiliani kameez paired with Seven for all Mankind jeans, Jimmy Choos and a Gucci bag or a Sabyasachi sari paired with Harry Winston jewels and Bottega Veneta minaudiere.

For international luxury brands, therefore, conquering the Indian market will require a lot more than a cut and paste — and, there is some formidable local talent to contend with.

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I wanted to share with the BoF community an exciting step in the evolution of Indian fashion that marks the official arrival of India on the global fashion scene.

For years, Western designers and global brands have  used Indian craftsmanship, culture and history as  an inspiration for fashion. From intricate embroidery this season on Marchesa’s "Raj and in Charge" dresses for Spring/Summer 2008 to khaki’s from Gap, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie and Fitch that have outfitted generations of Americans, India’s influence on global fashion goes all the way from the high-street to the high-end.

Today, my good friend Bandana Tewari, Fashion Features Editor of Vogue India , graciously sent me an image of the first cover for the newest magazine in Vogue’s stable of global fashion magazines, which now number 17 in total. From Japan to France to Mexico to Switzerland, Vogue has been the undisputed arbiter of fashion and culture for over 100 years, since its launch in 1892 as a society magazine.

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