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

Giambattista Valli Store, Paris | Source: Giambattista Valli

Giambattista Valli: “True Luxury Is When Others Come To You” (Style.com)
“There’s something about Giambattista Valli’s clothes that is so fundamentally optimistic, they’ve got you at hello,” said Style.com’s Tim Blanks—and last week, the designer opened his first Paris boutique, in the centuries-old Galerie de la Madeleine.”

Diane Von Furstenberg and China: A Perfect Fit? (NY Times)
“Today, there are roughly three dozen DVF boutiques worldwide, and she’s extending her reach into China, with shops in Beijing and Shanghai…’I came for the first time in 1990. And I’ve always had this fantasy. I’d like to sell every Chinese a T-shirt.’”

When friendship and fashion equal success (Financial Times)
“When launching Gilt Groupe, an online shopping site that currently has 3m members, the co-founders did not trouble to write a traditional business plan. Instead Alexis Maybank, 35 and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, 33, took what they had learnt from Harvard Business School and bypassed the formality.”

EBay to Buy Germany’s Brands4friends (Bloomberg)
“EBay Inc., the largest e-commerce marketplace, agreed to buy brands4friends, Germany’s biggest online shopping club, to increase fashion sales in Europe.”

Seamless Sabya (Deccan Herald)
“His clothes are an extension of his personality — they’re cheery, colourful and above all, exude a strong sense of Indianness. With his mantra being ‘clothes are just extensions of one’s intellect’, B-town’s favourite designer, Sabyasachi Mukherjee has proved his mettle in the business of fashion.”

Behind the scenes at Wills India Fashion Week, courtesy of PR Pundit

This week on The Business of Fashion we welcome several guest contributors to give us the scoop on recent fashion weeks, the IHT conference and local market trends in India. We’re calling it our own India Fashion Week, but as you’ll see, that might be the last thing India needs.

NEW DELHI, India — Bollywood, Cricket and Fashion. Everyday these three topics bring to life the popular culture pages of India’s leading national newspapers, The Times of India and Hindustan Times. And of this colourful ménage à trois, fashion is the relative newcomer, but is growing fast.

In the last year alone, the local scene has exploded to include three major prêt-a-porter fashion weeks, a bridal couture week, a regional fashion week in Kolkata, a proposed men’s fashion week and enough corporate sponsors to power each one. Multi-brand fashion boutiques and über-luxe malls featuring international brands have also recently opened. Local fashion media has reached critical mass, with Harper’s Bazaar, which launched an Indian edition last month, Vogue India, and countless other magazines all aimed at India’s it-bag aspiring middle classes.

But, let’s start at the very beginning, to see how it all began.

India’s first ever fashion week took place in New Delhi in the Autumn of 2000, organised by the newly created Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), the international talent agency IMG, and title sponsor Lakmé, a leading Indian cosmetics and beauty brand. This edition ran until the big split in 2006. Since then, Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW) by IMG is held in Mumbai, home of Bollywood and “filmy” glamour, while the FDCI continued as Wills India Fashion Week (WIFW) in New Delhi. Add to this Delhi Fashion Week (DFW), only two seasons old, created by the FDCI’s defecting former executive director.

Which brings us to the Autumn/Winter 2009 shows last month, where over 180 fashion and accessory designers in 80+ runway shows, unveiled their collections across three events in two cities, between March 18 and 31, with a record number of corporate sponsors including Hewlett Packard, Audi, Grey Goose, Carlsberg, Yahoo, Reliance, Kingfisher airlines and Fedex.

As FDCI president Sunil Sethi told The Business of Fashion: “Even in these times of recession there is a definite buzz around brand India and a special place on the rack for us. It is all about continuity.  If a customer has come to us once, whether they add another designer or replace one with the other, they nevertheless carry brand India forward. Let us get the international fashion community here first. Let them see our creativity, our warmth and the hunger we have to be part of the world of fashion.”

But that is easier said than done, and there is a long way to go before this is achieved.

If only these fashion weeks did not shift venue every year, resulting in constant logistical reprogramming between glitzy five-star hotels, a spanking new luxury mall, a drab industry trade venue, and a crumbling performance arts hall, creating an image problem, which never helps in fashion

What’s more, designers are split and often conflicted, especially the younger ones, as to which week they should participate in. On one occasion designers even fought publicly, one accusing the other of delaying his show on purpose.

For media and buyers, the three fashion weeks are no treat either. Media outlets are forced to deploy larger teams to simultaneously cover all events comprehensively. The all-important front row of international buyers, such as Julie Gilhart, fashion director of Barneys New York who attended WIFW last month, must choose between fashion weeks or face the impossible drive across Delhi between venues, in the deadlock of peak traffic hours.

What the Indian fashion community needs to do instead is create a single organisation to interface between designers and related government bodies, retailers, manufacturers and financial institutions. We should aim to make a global imprint with our craft and textile heritage, creativity and colour at global standards of competitiveness; marketing India as a design hub. Indeed, the craft and colour of India has caught the imagination of the world, not just-a-bit helped by the phenomenal success of Slumdog Millionaire.

To outside commentators this is more than apparent. A few days ago bigwig fashion journalist Suzy Menkes wrote in a New York Times article, “As the vast country’s designers take Indian style beyond the draped sari and its woven fabrics to Western cut and sew, a local industry is now doing more than making low-cost clothes for export overseas. [Yet] in spite of a vibrant market across the subcontinent, the rallying cry of those 150-plus designers is this: “Can we make it internationally?”

Manish Arora has made it, with critical acclaim, if not commercial success. Pieces by Rajesh Pratap Singh have been stocked at Colette in Paris. Other designers including Anamika Khanna, Sabyasachi, Ashish N. Soni and Namrata Joshipura, are also making their mark internationally. A couple of other promising up-and-comers including Gaurav Gupta and Varun Sardana are waiting in the wings but need seed investment to take off.

As for the crowded show calendar and multiple fashion weeks, some industry participants think it might be too early to tell whether three really is crowd.  “I think we should reserve judgment for the time being,” says  Nonita Kalra, Editor-in-Chief of ELLE India. “I don’t think the calendar is crowded. Just compare the numbers to the burgeoning middle class. India is a big country with big tastes. What seems like an explosion to the rest of the world is just a small party for us.”

Either way, while the dust has settled a bit this year, the chaos of fashion week in India is not a pretty sight.  That said, the threat of recession has turned quite a lot of people rather more serious in bringing Indian fashion from fraternity to industry, not gang war. And that can only do us some good.

Sita Wadhwani is a writer, fashion stylist and trend scout based between New Delhi and Mumbai.

Fashion needs to change (Emirates Business 24-7)
One of BoF’s favourite Indian designers, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, lays out his approach for the future of the fashion business.

A Modern Take on Iceland’s Traditional Hand-Knit Look (WSJ)
The Icelandic sweater is a source of inspiration for many contemporary designers in Reykjavik’s thriving fashion scene.

Block Party (WWD)
This fall, Karl Lagerfeld is set to launch Kapsule, a unisex collection of three scents that can be mixed and matched.

What Happens in Vegas: $9 Billion Mega Project Ups the Ante on Luxury (WWD)
In Vegas, the $9 Billion City Center project, slated to open next year has signed a strong roster of luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Co.

Soaring online sales defy credit crunch (Drapers)
In the UK, online shoppers spent £26.5 billion in the first six months this year.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee designs, photo courtesy of Sabyasachi Couture.

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)

Sabyasachi showed his S/S 2008 collection in New York last night to a crowd mixed with New York City-based Indian socialites, important fashion journalists like Laird Borrelli-Persson of Style.com and Meredith Melling-Burke of Vogue, and other curious onlookers eager to see what the "Hermes of India" would come up with this season.

As Laird told me before the show after she had taken a quick pre-show sneak peek backstage, it was "classic Sabya".

He sent out rich Indian fabrics in a deep "revolutionary" colour palette of burnt orange, forest green and indian khaki, cut in classic (sometimes very voluminous) Western silhouettes. Revolutionary symbols from Russia, Cuba and elsewhere accented the clothes, which strummed along to Tracy Chapman and perhaps a deeper message of Sabyasachi’s plans of bringing a little bit of India to the global fashion.

(more photos below)

All photos are property of the Business of Fashion.

However, anyone who has done business in India will know that navigating the the notoriously challenging Indian business world is not easy. In Indian fashion, it is even more challenging. Darwinian forces and age old Indian cultural patterns  collide with the already flaky and frenetic fashion world. This is, after all, the country where Majed Al Sabah’s putative Indian business partner in an initiative to develop an Indian outpost of Villa Moda left him at the proverbial alter and then went off to set up his own competing business under another name, using the Villa Moda concept. Clearly, understanding the nuances of how things really work in India and how to gain the trust of and commitment from Indian business people is critical to success.

This is partially why I think there should be much more discussion on which of the local Indian designers (and there are literally 100′s of them who show in Delhi and Mumbai each season) will conquer the Indian market. These are people who have lived and breathed India from the get go, and have the know-how and connections to make things work in their home country. Sure, most of the big European luxury players partner with illustrious local business families with fashion cred, but it seems to me that having an operation that understands the Indian market and designs specifically for it can be a very powerful way in which local Indian designers can compete with the big guys.

The truth is, the tradition of cultural dress in India is not relegated to formal events or occasions as it is in some other Asian countries.  In fact,  Indian men and women, even at the most elite socio-economic levels,  integrate traditional dress into their everyday lives. This is, on the one hand, a reflection of climate. On the other  hand, it is a reflection of a distinct pride in Indian culture. For designers who share in this pride, understand the culture, and can design for it, they can have a leg up on any foreigners who come to play on the feisty Indian fashion playground.

Tonight, one of my favourite Indian designers, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, invited me to an event in London showcasing the work of some of the most talented Indian designers. Held by the Gallery Sumukha at London’s Bombay Brasserie, the event brought together 30 artists from India who collaborated to produce thematically linked pieces of fashion, art and design.

Though the Bombay Brasserie space did not lend itself well to this kind of exhibition, it was very impressive to see the work of so many talented young artists from India all in one place. At a fashion show in New York a few season ago, a Japanese buyer from Isetan asked me if I was the "Hermes of India". When I looked at him with a blank face, not knowing what he meant, he went on to describe an Indian ingenue of great talent and noteriety. I soon figured out he was talking about Sabyasachi — so you can understand the level of talent that was assembled for the event. Manish Arora, Rohit Bal, and Rajesh Pratap Singh were some of the other Indian fashion luminaries who were working the crowd.  Right now, it seems many of them have their hearts set on conquering the Europe and America. It’s my hope that one of these guys also finds the inner passion to also make it in their home market, building the world’s first luxury brand in India, for India.
–
Sabyasachi developed this look based on the painting to the left by Paresh Maity. It is reminiscent of the  nerd girl chic collection he showed to great reviews in New York last September.

Manish Arora’s contribution was a signature Manish skirt and jacket based on the stunning work of Ravinder Reddy.

We fell in love with these  old-school valises in modern colours by Suman Sharma, inspired by Bose Krishnamachari in collaboration with Rohit Bal.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion