Ritu Beri explains how India has forever undersold its brand of luxury

Beri tells Veenu Sandhu how India has forever undersold its brand of luxury and why the government must get involved for the industry to get global recognition

Luxury and the government don’t go together. The president might live in the country’s most luxurious house and several ministers and chief ministers might have bungalows allotted to them in prized parts of Delhi, yet the governments of our country do not want to be seen as patronising luxury. Ritu Beri wants to change that.

“If India is to make a name in the world of luxury, the way Paris and Milan have, we need our policy makers to understand and support luxury,” says the designer who has kept an eye on the industry, both domestic and international, for nearly three decades now.

I am meeting Beri at Dolce Tonino in Mehrauli, which is one of the seven ancient cities that make present-day Delhi. The chaotic area, where chic showrooms and designer studios share space with factory seconds outlets and small, haphazardly stocked shops, offers a glimpse of the many worlds that India is. A quaint Italian and salad place, Tonino sits by the busy national highway that runs all the way to Chennai. However, apart from the occasional sound of a Delhi Metro train passing by, the place whose architecture is inspired by Tuscany villas is peaceful.

It’s a sunny winter afternoon and we choose to sit in the courtyard. Instead of the elaborate Tuscany menu, we opt for salads. Beri goes for Macedonia di frutta quinoa (summer fruit and quinoa salad with beetroot), while I pick pollo arrosto, which has a much longer name but which is basically roasted chicken salad with grapes, dry apricot, spring onion, fresh fennel and apple cider vinegar dressing.

Beri, who says she doesn’t believe in taking a break from work, has had particularly busy few months as she hosted the third edition of the Luxury Symposium. The symposium, which was organised by the Luxury League, Beri’s not-for-profit foundation of prominent luxury brands, is aimed at putting Brand India on the global luxury map by encouraging synergy among stakeholders, and in the process providing game changing opportunities to artisans and craftsmen. Beri realises that if this is to happen, she needs to bring the government on board.

This year, the symposium did succeed in catching the attention of the powers that be. The Prime Minister and the Vice-President sent across letters of encouragement. “And after three years, the commerce minister came,” says Beri, taking a spoonful of the salad. “He announced that they would like to start a vertical for luxury and once a year organise an international luxury fair under the ITPO (India Trade Promotion Organisation, headquartered at Delhi's Pragati Maidan). I think that’s huge.”

Among the eight ministers who turned up at the event was the minority affairs minister, who assured support to some national award winning artisans who were present at the symposium along with a clutch of master craftsmen —  weavers, spinners, zardozi makers. “And the external affairs minister said they’d like the local luxury brands to offer them modern versions of what they can give as gifts to global heads of state, instead of just picking something up from the cottage emporium,” says Beri, clearly pleased with these developments. “It’s a start.”

The idea for the Luxury League and symposium took root when Beri attended a luxury conference in Paris three years ago. “There they talked about how luxury comes from different countries. They spoke about Belgium, Vietnam and several other countries but India found no mention,” says Beri. “It irked me as I sat there in the audience. I believe that India epitomises luxury — it exists in our royalty, our palaces, our jewellery, our weddings, our food and even in the kind of family time we have. We are luxurious. Period.”

The experience irked her, but also excited and provoked her. “I started a trust (The Luxury League) and realised the reason we are not being acknowledged for our “brandness” is that the government does not understand what our treasures are. And even if it does, it does not realise how much we can leverage it,” she says.

The grapes in my roasted chicken salad have added a tangy twist and made a predictable dish exciting. That’s the kind of twist Beri is talking about — one that will, say, turn a beautiful handmade, handcrafted piece of work that today carries an affordable tag into a Made in India item of luxury.

“The Cartiers and Van Cleef & Arpels can’t match our Indian jewellery. Yet, look at how they market themselves,” she says. “We don’t tap into our history or create a story to sell a brand.”

A shining example of this is khadi. Khadi, she says, is such a romantic story, one that has Mahatma Gandhi associated with it — “who in the world doesn’t know him?”.

“We have such a powerful product here, which we don’t need to introduce to the world. We just have to talk about it,” says the designer who was appointed advisor to the Khadi and Village Industries Commission in 2016 to promote khadi globally. It pains her that the fabric she has had a close relationship with from the time she started out as a designer in 1990 continues to be sold in government style: “the branding, marketing, advertising — all is government. It’s not cool. If we have to position khadi at another level, we need to think international standards,” she says. It’s the same with the trade fairs that India organises abroad. “All we offer is tradition and ethnicity. There is no modernity is what we present to the world.”

Our salads are almost over. The portions were large and satisfying. “It’s too healthy, this stuff,” says Beri about the quinoa. She skips the dessert and opts for green tea, but suggests that I try the chocolate dessert. I order a fonduta di cioccolato con gelato. A baked patty packed with chocolate and accompanied with vanilla ice-cream arrives. I run my spoon through it and a volcano of chocolate erupts on my plate. Divine.

Beri no longer exhibits her creations at fashion shows or fashion weeks. Ask her about it and the response is this: Been there, done that.

Beri is from the first batch of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). “Back then fashion was a course you took up just before you were getting married — it was not a serious profession,” she laughs. NIFT changed that. Even though it had no campus and classes were held in the shopping complex of Samrat Hotel, just across the street from the prime minister’s residence in Delhi, the faculty was world class, Beri recalls.

Right after passing out in December 1990, she launched her brand, “Lavanya”, which means “charm”. “Since there was not much to contest with, the Ritu Beri label was an overnight success. I was making pots of money,” she says. She opened her boutique in the living room of the first floor of her parents’ house, not far from the Greater Kailash I market, a shopper’s paradise in Delhi, and turned the balcony of the house into the show window. At a time when public relations professionals weren’t heard of, she hired a PR agency for her brand.

Beri would go on to become the first Asian designer to head a French fashion brand, Jean-Louis Scherrer, and would thereafter have one foot in Paris and another in India. In the mid-1990s, much before the bridal fairs and bridal weeks became a thing, she would do a bridal wear-focused show in Delhi.

Today, a lot of Beri’s energy — and she has plenty of — is consumed by The Luxury League. “When I started, people said, ‘Call it The Heritage League because luxury will not get much support from policy makers’. And I said, ‘Hell with you. I am not into architecture.’” She understands that at many levels, the world “luxury” is anti-vote. “But it’s not — it’s handwork, it’s your karigars (craftsmen) you are supporting.”

She’s trying to change a mindset. “It will happen,” she says, “It is happening.”