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.

BoF: How would you describe your point of view on fashion, your angle?

BT: Every time someone asks, ‘How do I become a fashion journalist?’ I say, ‘Forget fashion.’ You’ve got to be a social anthropologist first. That for me is the hook. I don’t think I could think of fashion in a uni-linear way. Fashion is like a fantastic hydra-headed monster that is influenced by everything around us – pop culture, state of the economy, global warming, you name it. I can only understand fashion in this holistic way.

BoF: You’ve been working in fashion for eight years now, and India has gone through a massive change in that time. Can you tell us what you’ve observed as India has become part of global fashion culture?

BT: In India everything happened so quickly. In the first phase, when fashion became corporatised and institutionalised into Fashion Weeks, it started off being very Indian. Then the media cried foul: ‘No one’s wearing just these traditional clothes – what are these Indian designers doing?!’ And then suddenly everyone was into – what I think is a reductionist Indian fashion term – ‘fusion-fashion’, as in Indo-Western fusion, which was basically Western silhouettes with dollops of very ethnic nuances and motifs. We were following all the clichés that we punish the rest of the world for using on us. A nice little jacket but paisleyed to death, you know? Or skirts that were too embellished.

BoF: But today, Indian fashion has morphed into something more defined.

BT: The third stage of fashion in India was the period when we reconciled ourselves to the fact that there is a certain DNA that cannot be taken out of the country. We do have a forte that lies in handicraft, in decorative arts, in embellishments, in technique. But what designers started doing was to not use them literally: they took little bits of it and used it in fluid silhouettes. And then we had beautiful collections from designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Anamika Khanna, Varun Bahl, Savio, James Ferreira. They brought this very coherent vision of India, which unfortunately I feel the Western world still hasn’t seen or utilised.

BoF: What do you mean?

BT: Well, here we are at Paris Fashion Week for spring/summer 2012. I look around me there are events promoting all young emerging designers from London. I’ve just come back from a CFDA presentation of American designers. Then, you have the Koreans in ‘Seoul to Soul’ in the Museum of Decorative Arts. It’s phenomenal how much support different countries are offering to these designers. When I went to ‘Seoul to Soul’ I thought, ‘We now need to’ – and I’m definitely going to spearhead this –‘get five, six Indian designers to have a platform like this, where we, as Vogue India perhaps, can support it.’ I saw the emerging talent, and we are no less accomplished.

BoF: But we’ve been through this phase where Sabyasachi and Ashish N Soni were showing in New York and Manish Arora was showing in London. And it seems to me that, except for Manish Arora, most Indian designers have gone back to refocus on the Indian market.

BT: Well we’re at the stage where a top Indian designer like Sabyasachi Mukherjee can sell a garment for the same price as a couture dress by Dior and conclude, ‘I know my forte lies in doing Indian clothes for Indian people and catering to a market that is worth close to 11, 12 billion US dollars per annum’ – which is the Indian wedding industry. Some designers are like Manish, who [has shown] his first collection for Paco Rabanne: he’s very clear he wants to make it in the international arena. But other designers have decided their marketing focus is in India, and they are doing phenomenally well in their own country.

BoF: And maybe that makes sense. Because some global brands have failed to understand that the Indian market requires a really tailored offering.

BT: Absolutely. Not just tailored, but you have to understand India in terms of its spending power and when that money is spent. In a certain month you’re not supposed to be ostentatious, so forget about any grand opening in that month. You have to do full research of the rituals of India. Come August, September and right up to February, it’s the wedding season. It’s also the season with all the top festivals, Diwali, the festival of lights, where money is spent, buying for others and for yourself.

BoF: Do you think global brands are starting to understand this?

BT: Absolutely, and to respond to it too. Gucci did a limited-edition ‘Made for India’ series, which you can only buy in India. And it catered the Indian sensibility, which is a little bit bling. The India Knot clutch, which is by Bottega Veneta, was a sell-out, inspired by the architecture of India. Then Hermès recently launched six or seven beautiful saris – an extension of the scarves they’re doing, and I can tell you now, it is going to fly. There are so many customisations happening, on a small level: Jimmy Choo does bridal shoes for the Indian wedding industry. All these brands realise that just a bit of tailoring for the Indian aesthetic goes a long way for them to establish themselves in the hearts of the Indian consumer.

BoF: You have this interesting dichotomy between these big local Indian designers and the international superbrands. How does this divide represent itself in Vogue India, in terms of editorial and advertisers?

BT: When you flick through Vogue India, everything is customised for the Indian reader. So we put Indian designers alongside all the international designers irrespective of who’s advertising and who’s not. Because if you walk down the streets in Bombay, go to cocktail parties, go to dinner parties, we’re still wearing Tarun Tahiliani saris but with Manolo Blahniks. We are taking international fashion the way we want to. Not necessarily getting into gowns yet, because that’s something to be talked about and discussed further. The way we are indulging in [Western] fashion is really through accessories.

BoF: And so the consumer has created their own fashion fusion in the way they dress.

BT: Absolutely. So there is no way Vogue India would not put designers together. You know, we don’t care that Tarun Tahiliani doesn’t show at New York Fashion Week. He shows in India Fashion Week and that’s good enough for us. And he sells and he’s loved by his consumers and our readers. So if he’s doing a black sari that becomes the It-sari of the season and we do a ‘Midnight Black is Back’ page in the front of book, you’ll see a Jil Sander black shirt with that Tarun Tahiliani black sari, with a Dior black clutch and a black dress by Gaurav Gupta, who’s a young Indian designer.

BoF: Do you also Vogue India as playing a role in educating consumers about international fashion? Because before Vogue fashion magazines in India were not nearly at the international level.

BT: When we launched we said ‘education first’. Every brand story we did was almost like a profile: the legacy of Louis Vuitton, of Bottega Veneta. We’d customise it for our Indian readers. So if it was Gucci, it was about what Frida Giannini thinks about women all over the world and what she thinks about Indian women. And we’d weave the brand story with it so they get to know about the brand. A few seasons later, the next stage was to engage international designers properly with the Indian consumer. So it was about going back to the designers and saying, ‘How are you engaging out customers? What is it about India?’ So all our stories would revolve around that.

BoF: Condé Nast set up Vogue India as a fully owned subsidiary, so Condé Nast India operates as part of Condé Nast International. How does that relationship work?

BT: We were the first international magazine in India to be 100 per cent owned by the parent company, Condé Nast, and it makes a huge difference when you don’t have another partner. Your marketing strategy, your sales strategy, your editorial strategy is in tandem with the rest of fully-owned Vogues all over the world. In terms of the quality and content we want to bring to the consumer, I’d say it’s as good as even American Vogue, British Vogue. And that happens because we have full control of our magazine’s destiny.

BoF: Do you have interaction with the other Vogue Editions? Do you take content from time to time from British Vogue or American Vogue?

BT: We do that all the time. Because someone picking up Vogue in India wants to know what’s happening in the rest of the world too. So we take syndications, not just the English-language magazines but from Vogue Japan Vogue, Portugal, Brazil. We are global citizens. But globalisation is a dirty word today: I think the international community is getting so tired of everything that’s globalised. So we’re not homogenised – we have such an intrinsic indigenous quality to our lifestyle and we celebrate that. Because that indigenous quality is absolutely imperative.

BoF: You mentioned cultural clichés earlier. I wanted to talk about the power of Bollywood. There’s a lot of Bollywood in your covers. Is it is still very powerful force?

BT: Bollywood is by far the biggest marketing tool for anything that you do in India. I’d prefer to call it Indian cinema, but Bollywood is what it is right now. And we took a conscious decision to Voguify the Bollywood styles.

BoF: How do you mean?

I mean all these young actors and actresses are gorgeous. Whether you like the kind of movies they choose to act in… that’s a subjective choice. But we took these amazing women who are successful and extremely powerful. And there were a lot of designer gowns and designer saris, and they’re on the cover with the top make-up artists and photographers: Patrick Demarchelier shot our first cover. We’ve had Gisele on the cover wearing an Indian-style bikini done by Tarun Tahiliani and a Balmain jacket, and we’ve had Bollywood stars in Gucci dresses. So we’ve brought that Vogue element to Bollywood. And it has changed the way people now want to present themselves in public. Because the whole red carpet thing didn’t exist in India then, but it does now.

A version of this interview first appeared in Industrie magazine.

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.

INDIA IN FOCUS

Sabyasachi Summer/Resort 2011 | Photo: BoF

In his new book, India Calling – An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking, author and New York Times online columnist Anand Giridharadas writes that “the deepest change I witnessed in India was…in how people conceived their possibilities. Indians now seemed to know that they didn’t have to leave…to have their personal revolutions.”

By the same token, the deepest change I noted in my conversations with Indian fashion designers this time around was that instead of trying in vain to conquer an over-saturated and hyper-competitive international industry, they now have their sights set on a nascent market at home that is showing growing signs of consumerism and interest in fashion.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee, one of the country’s brightest fashion stars whom I first met when he was showing in New York, said that he decided to pull back after struggling to gain traction abroad and sensing a growing opportunity at home. According to a 2009 study by Grail Research, the market for Indian designer fashion was expected to grow 178 percent between 2008 and 2012, reaching a small, but respectable $189m a year, still only a fraction of one percent of the global market.

“If you look at the Indian market, it is becoming stronger and stronger. It would be foolish not to address that challenge and possibility,” he says. “I think it’s very important for an Indian designer to consolidate his position in India first, make himself stronger and then take his brand international as opposed to the other way around.”

The results of this new focus were evident on the runway, as Mr. Mukherjee put on the best show of the week, both in terms of the collection itself and the styling, choreography and music.

“A lot of Indian women like wearing clothing which defines them as Indian,” says Mr. Mukherjee. “I might be doing Western clothing, I might be doing Indian clothing, but there is always a common denominator, and that is India.  If you look at the approach, if you look at the artistry, if you look at the textiles, there’s always a strong indigenous feel.”

Even some of the strongest emerging designers at Lakmé Fashion Week like Shivan and Narresh, whose design sensibilities are more Westernised, said they wanted to build foundations in India before making any concerted efforts to go abroad.

This is the right choice. The country’s cultural traditions, craftsmanship and climate make the Indian fashion market a tough one for foreign brands to penetrate, so local designers have a distinct home-turf advantage.

WHY TWO FASHION WEEKS?

Little Shilpa Summer/Resort 2011 | Photo: BoF

One cannot discuss fashion in India without discussing its highly politicised fashion system. Once upon a time, there was only one major fashion week, put on by the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), produced by IMG and sponsored by Lakmé, the country’s largest cosmetics company.

But in late 2005, when the FDCI controversially tripled the event sponsorship fee and found a new production partner, IMG and Lakmé decided to set up their own event in Bombay, splitting the Indian fashion community in two and creating a rift that has endured until today.

Many of the more established and commercially successful fashion designers chose to show at FDCI’s ‘official’ event in Delhi, while IMG-Lakmé attracted those with links to Bollywood and strong personal relationships with the organisers. Over time, Lakmé Fashion Week also emerged as the country’s premier launching pad for young design talent, through a variety of programs designed to cultivate and promote new names, something that the fashion establishment in Delhi was loathe to do, at least at first.

Still, this means that buyers, editors and international guests need to attend both fashion weeks to get a full picture of the market here, or that designers need to show at both fashion weeks to reach the full audience.

We have made this point before, but the Indian fashion industry would benefit greatly from a single, consolidated fashion week. As it stands, organisers appear to be struggling to fill five days of show slots in both cities with collections that truly merit runway exposure. Too many of the collections this week were poorly made, in cheap fabrics, without a clear design point of view or consumer target.

In short, the standards for showing at either fashion week India remain too low. Instead of having two fashion weeks with a few patches of excellence in a sea of mediocrity, India could have one strong fashion week with truly exacting standards, creating an incentive for all designers to up their game and lifting the quality overall.

However, that doesn’t look likely to happen. Most people I spoke to seemed to think a reconciliation was nigh impossible, the tension between the two camps being so pronounced. For the time being at least, India will continue to have two fashion weeks, neither of which really brings to bear the full business and creative potential that this country has to offer.

A FASHION WEEK FOR CONSUMERS

Photographers pit at Lakme Fashion Week | Photo: BoF

At Lakmé Fashion Week, there were only 190 buyers present this season, with 95 percent of the business and the lion’s share of buyers coming from within India, and buyers from the Middle East making up most of the balance.

But actually, that might be okay. As the fashion industry elsewhere grapples with the rise of consumer participation, Lakmé Fashion Week is not just tolerating it, but is embracing its consumer side. It’s a clever way of differentiating itself from its Delhi counterpart, which has proven marginally stronger in terms of wholesale trade and international buyers.

Fueled by the undeniable power of Bollywood and the voracious Indian media, Lakmé Fashion Week generates pages and pages of column inches, thousands of photos, and hours of television coverage every day. There are as many photographers in the pit here as there are in the main fashion capitals – except that they are all from the domestic market. It’s hard to fathom, but there are over 50 dedicated news channels alone on Indian TV, which along with the live-streaming of shows, brings fashion week straight to consumers all over this vast country, in several different languages.

One problem with this kind of media frenzy is that there are few commentators and observers qualified to review and report on the collections. The arrival of Vogue, by many accounts, has lifted the overall standard of fashion reporting, but still most of the attention is paid to the Bollywood stars who sit in the front row and who walk the runway to deliver ‘show-stoppers.’ Some of the collections are an after thought, and in some cases have nothing to do with what is actually available for sale.

There are some brands and businesses, however, which are using the Lakmé Fashion Week platform in a more commercially savvy way. Whereas most fashion weeks at this time of year—including the FDCI fashion week in Delhi—focus on Autumn/Winter 2011, Lakmé Fashion Week designers were showing Summer/Resort 2011 collections, some of which will actually be available to consumers in store and online in a matter of weeks.

As Pearl Uppal, chief-executive and co-founder of Fashion and You—India’s rapidly growing answer to Gilt Groupe and a sponsor of Lakmé Fashion Week—explained, following a successful trial last season, capsule collections from several emerging designers will be available on the website in only 21 days. Likewise, the stylish Sabina Chopra who regularly appeared in fresh-off-the-runway Sabayasachi, and works with the designer on business development, reported that the entire runway collection will be available in the brand’s stores in a matter of weeks.

How do they do that, you ask? Most Indian designers control or own the means of production and are therefore able to prioritise the manufacture of small volumes right after fashion week to capitalise on the consumer buzz generated by catwalk shows, something most Western brands are still struggling to do.

SPONSORSHIP, TO THE POINT OF DISTRACTION

Kallol Datta at Lakmé Fashion Week | Photo: BoF

But the consumer-focused nature of Lakme Fashion Week also has its pitfalls. Taking a cue from Lincoln Center in New York, Lakmé Fashion Week is an important money spinner for IMG, and most of that revenue is generated from sponsorship deals with the likes of Lakmé, but also a host of other companies including Aircel, a mobile phone provider, Blenders Pride, a liquor company, and Lavazza, the coffee company.

Everywhere you look there is a company logo or a brand-sponsored booth. In a consumer-oriented environment this kind of branding seems alright, and IMG of course needs to make money from the event, but the right balance must be struck in order to maintain the event’s integrity and so designer collections can be shown in the best way possible, without unnecessary distraction.

Unfortunately, this was not always the case. There were times when the branding at Lakmé Fashion Week simply went too far. At the ‘DHL Future of Fashion’ show, emerging design talents Atsu Sekhose and Kallol Datta had been instructed to draw inspiration from the colours of the DHL logo. When the yellow and red collections appeared, bathed in yellow DHL light, under yellow and red DHL boxes hung like lanterns all the way down the runway, a line was crossed into crassness during the shows of two of the most hotly-tipped talents of the week.

While events like these would be impossible without sponsors like DHL, they must also be willing to do so in a way that enhances the designer presentations, not detract from them.

AN OPTIMISTIC FASHION COMMUNITY

Gulshan Randhawa and Avni Doshi at LFW | Photo: BoF

Leaving the business and catwalk shows aside, the undoubted highlight of my week in Bombay was experiencing the infectious optimism of the people who are shaping the future of Indian fashion at this nascent stage. They might not yet have all the answers, but they are still excited for what lies ahead and seem willing and open to try new things. As a friend wrote to me upon hearing my reflections, being terribly jaded is a privilege of the overdeveloped ‘first world’.

From new friends like Manou, India’s answer to The Sartorialist, to old friends like the uber-smart fashion authority Bandana Tewari, the hospitality and kindness shown to me by the Indian fashion community was inspiring. I particularly enjoyed meeting the effervescent Bollywood costume designer turned fashion designer, Manish Malhotra—whose show was a beautiful celebration of the best in unashamedly Indian clothing—and chatting with Masaba Gupta, Shivan and Narresh and Little Shilpa, young designers who are creating their own fashion revolution here.

But far from being an Indian-only club, the fashion industry here also relies on talented individuals from around the world, many of whom plan to come for a few months, and end up staying here for years. Fern Mallis, who sat next to me during the shows whispering her words of wisdom and experience into my ears, has been coming to India for over ten years to advise IMG in getting Lakmé Fashion Week off the ground. Caroline Young, a sort of English fashion fairy godmother introduced me to many of the country’s top new talents. And the kind Mathieu Gugumus Leguillon, who used to design at Lanvin under Alber Elbaz, was always decked out in the coolest menswear from The Bungalow, his line for the local lifestyle boutique Bungalow Eight (not to be confused with the New York and London nightclubs of the same name.)

Last but not least comes IMG South Asia managing director Ravi Krishnan and his stellar team, who organised a fashion week that ran like clockwork in a country where punctuality isn’t always a priority. Thanks in particular to Amtosh Singh, Gulshan Randhawa and Anjana Sharma for helping me make the most of a trip that was ultimately too short. I hope to come back again very soon.

Imran Amed is founder and editor of the The Business of Fashion

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.

On this note, Vogue India’s Bandana Tewari called my attention to an insightful article written by Adam Levin, of The Times of South Africa, who delves into India’s nascent luxury brands, which are using their local knowledge and savoir-faire to stake their own claims in the Indian luxury market land grab. What’s more, some of the best indigenous brands may even have the potential for taking their world-class craftsmanship to a global audience, something that Western brands have done furtively for years.

I caught up with Bandana, who is in London this week, to learn more.  “India’s design signature has more to do with the quality of fabric and intricacy of workmanship rather than the silhouette,” she told me. “I don’t expect the Indian sari to be a sell out in Paris for instance. However, imagining say, a resort collection using the intrinsic fluidity of the sari with tempered down Indian embellishments is absolutely plausible.”

To wit, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Rajesh Pratap Singh and Manish Arora have already developed international profiles based on this kind of approach. Next-generation Indian designers like Namrata Joshipura and Anuj Sharma have managed to catch the attention of international buyers and press at the two competing Indian fashion weeks held recently.

But, as Bandana notes, “Indian designers selling abroad still have a lot to learn, especially from the likes of Dries Van Noten, Etro and Kenzo-designers who continue to reinterpret ethnic influences by making them culturally exciting not ethno-centric.” Until then, Indian brands will continue to fight the good fight in their homeland, while the international brands may use their own advantage to bring Indian craftsmanship to the world.

Sabyasachi A/W 2008 images courtesy of Getty Images, International Herald Tribune and Michael Rubenstein (www.mrubenstein.com)

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.

For its Indian debut, Patrick Demarchelier snared Gemma Ward to pose with Indian beauties Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra, Monikangana Dutta, Preity Zinta and Laxmi Menon. The magazine includes contributions from some of Vogue’s internationally known contributors including Lucinda Chambers of British Vogue who styled the cover and editorial featuring Gemma Ward. The first issue is being feted tomorrow evening at a launch party at the immense Umaid Bhawan Palace in the Rajasthani city of Jodhpur.

The timing of the launch is no accident. With a long tradition of luxury in India and an estimated $500m domestic luxury market, global brands will now be eager to advertise their wares to India’s growing middle class.

Congratulations to Editor Priya Tanna, Bandana and the rest of the team on a phenomenal first issue. Now that Indian fashion has officially arrived, I am looking forward to seeing and hearing the intelligent editorial and images that will communicate the latest in Indian fashion and culture — not only to India, but to the world.  Finally, India will get credit for its rich history and creative contributions to global fashion. It’s long overdue.

No sooner had posted my own thoughts on the future of Indian fashion, that I began seeing other interesting perspectives which have emerged in other online fashion media over the past week on India’s luxury goods and fashion industry. Clearly, Indian fashion is on fire. Much of the content is infused with the intelligent musings of Bandana Tewari, who is also the newly named Fashion Features Editor of Vogue India and has become a good friend since we met back at London Fashion Week in February 2006.

The most recent JC Report focuses on India, covering Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in Delhi and Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai. The highlight for me was an insightful interview conducted by global fashion guru Jason Campbell (the JC of JC Report) who speaks to  Bandana Tewari,  who is equally guru like in her knowledge of the Indian Fashion scene. You could call it the meeting of the gurus.

Bandana also features as part of an interesting dive into Indian fashion aesthetic at luxuryculture.com. There is also a fascinating interview with India’s minister for Commerce and Industry, Shri Kamal Nath, who provides a detailed look inside some of the drivers of Indian wealth and how the luxury goods industry is shaping up. If you want to get your head around the dizzying growth of Fashion and Luxury in India, this article is a must read.

[The picture above is snapped in Bandana's hotel room at Delhi Fashion Week, when Bandana kindly ordered us some room service after an exhausting day full of shows.]