Pizzazz and pizzas

LUNCH WITH BS/ Raghavendra Rathore

Lunch at Olive is a ladies' affair. New Delhi's hip, A D Singh-owned Mumbai clone is running to packed tables, so I'm glad my guest has thought to make a reservation for us.

Fashion designer Raghavendra Rathore, India's only true-blue sartorialist, eschews the image of fashion as the breeding ground for society's enfants terrible.

But then, in the alternative world of the designer, he is the alternative in more senses than one. For one, he isn't part of the air-kissing brigade who hope to mwah-mwah their way to fashion stores; unlike them, he only lives part-time in Delhi, operating from his base in provincial Rajasthan, Jodhpur; he isn't flamboyant either in his hugely private personal life or on the ramp; his clothes are fitted and structured and meant for wearing by real people; and he's spent a long while trying to professionalise his stand as a fashion designer "" perhaps less successfully than he might have hoped. But of one thing he's certain: "Fashion," he says, "is going to explode."

If it hasn't already. Rathore has his back to the lunching ladies "" their streaked hair and solitaires and clothes, some perhaps bought off the rack at his recently-launched flagship store in the shadow of the Qutab Minar, announce their status as the power women of the capital's society "" and they're raking him with their eyes.

We're among only a handful of men at the restaurant, but those avaricious eyes have time only for calculating glances of Rathore between mouthfuls of penne and pasta.

Fortunately, the formal atmosphere of our table is enough to keep them at bay. If Rathore is aware of their presence, he doesn't let on. Yet, he isn't unaware of his celebrity profile.

A Powerpoint presentation I'll unfortunately be sent only a few days after our lunch takes pains to highlight his mutidisciplinary talents "" "Hotelier. Chocolatier. Welder. Carpenter. Interior Designer. Lifestyle merchant. Owner of two fashion labels." "" and for some reason, packed with irrelevant information: "Survived 105 bombs during the Pak war." (Him and a few hundred-thousand others, but that's beside the point.)

"I've been looking forward to lunch," he says now, restless, fidgety, the conversation jump-starting at one point and scurrying off into quite another direction, "I've been dreaming of their pizza."

But a discussion is our priority, so we sit on our menus till the lunching ladies have moved on to fondant and coffee, before we place our order: he settles for a simple Margarita, I opt for a calzone Arrabiata and, just to ensure a healthy diet, we decide on a Caesar's salad between ourselves.

Rathore, a "cousin of the Maharaja of Jodhpur" "" they share a grandfather in common "" is ready to take stock of the Indian fashion industry. "Fashion isn't being dictated by designers," he says, "but by Ektaa Kapoor's serials and Aman Verma's jackets."

It's a particularly harsh perspective, but he's realistic enough to own up that "that's where the big chunk of money is." And taking stock of the environment around us, adds: "Page 3 designers have very few years left, though it's important to be part of the process right now and take whatever benefit one can from it."

The Gucci concept "" of a luxury label remaining at high-end, semi-mass "" isn't likely to work for India, he explains. Which is why he'll settle for "any incentive that is volume driven. I'm happy with profit sharing and don't want anything that's more than what my effort deserves."

Radical thinking for a fashion designer who, or so many imagine, would appear more intent on hiving off the creamy topmost layer through what goes by the name of couture. Not Rathore though, who's more intent tying up his supply and credit line balances as he rationalises corporatisation for his labels.

"We've perfected the art of the mass," he explains, having opted for the Americanised route of non-consignment brand distribution.

Typically, his fashion pret label is available in high-end stores in Mumbai and Delhi, he's got supply lines to Shoppers' Stop with its huge inventories, is distributing furnishings to lifestyle stores and says "I'm just beginning to hear the hum."

It's volumes of no less than 2,000 a piece he's looking at to drive the Indi Pret label, but hasn't given up the high-end Rathore brand, currently tied in with his Jodhpur store as a luxury label. Where the designer is re-inventing himself, he says over the salad, is in providing the software equivalent of design.

"Instead of hiring people, I've created a strong database of designers who understand textures and understand the value of skills, with whom I work on a project basis. Technology and the Internet have made communication so much simpler."

Earlier, the factory he had set up for a huge investment has been dissolved and distributed between three-four contractors "who work exclusively for us. To achieve that, however, that initial investment was very important."

The lunching ladies have left when our meal is served, and we no longer have to shout at each other to make ourselves heard.

Perhaps it's the excellent pizzas, for our conversation is now mellower: "The Fashion Week," Rathore says of the event that has become a business mela for the local designer frat, "is like a double-edged sword. You can't stay away because all the important stores turn up to buy, and if you aren't present, they will have committed their money to others, so you just can't sell to them later."

Nor do they buy exclusively from favourite designers. "They commit themselves to Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh a designer to hedge their bets, and so everyone has everyone."

A little, you can't resist asking, like Raymond's experiment with Be:? Not quite, Rathore says. "Be: has a technical flaw. It's pushing the Be: label, not the designers, and it's promoting the Raymond's brand. Designers can't be in a place where the parent brand gets top billing. Besides, there's a dichotomy. It needs to be in maximum footfall areas like malls, but buyers in malls don't buy designer stuff."

Between volume-driven Indi Pret and its designer offtake, Rathore (the brand), Rathore (the designer) knows the image is emerging from the lifestyle connotation of the Jodhpur legacy: "It's like the aspiration for the Ralph Lauren lifestyle with its connotation of polo and a relaxed, leisurely way of life. Heritage will always be my platform, I'd be lost without it. In the end, the meeting point is to carefully calibrate products between the global and the local, to aim for glocalisation."

Unashamedly, he admits, "designer products have huge returns", and he's experiencing the impact at the Jodhpur shop in Delhi.

But for him, he says over coffee (he resists desserts as far as possible), the gameplan is to "become like a tumour". So, besides having constant supply lines for his mass-volume fashion and home furnishings, he's powered the luxury chocolates brand Les Chocolates de Jodhpore ("during shaadis, I can sell hundreds of personalised boxes as part of the trousseau"), which he now hopes also to outsource to Kuwait or Dubai both for manufacturing and retail.

At some stage, he also hopes to get into perfumes. In the interim when he's in Jodhpur, the family heritage hotels business "" he's just redesigned the rooms "" takes over, but he's happy to spend time "articulating thought in 3-D", scribbling, sketching, working on designs for garden furniture, lights and lamps, corporate uniforms "to create a good portfolio".

And it's all part of a future, he believes, that will evolve around Indian designers creating a template for a software programme that will provide them the tools to sketch a whole collection for anyone around the world in no time.

"That is the future of design," he says, as we shake hands with the promise to meet at Jodhpur. I'm not sure whether the reference is to Jodhpur, his home, where he grew up "in the zenana", or to Jodhpur the store where, even now, no doubt, the ladies, having lunched well, are lying in wait for him.