FASHION: Delhi's fashion week stuck to the plot and stole the orders at the end of it all. |
It's the end of another fashion week, and if there's an observation worth making, it's this: for once, designers let the clothes do the talking, with on-ramp antics minimised. |
Just as well. "We must have done the same amount of business in the first day this year as we did in the entire week last year," says designer Raghavendra Rathore. |
For Delhi-based Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), the relief was that despite a rival fashion week held in Mumbai, Delhi maintained its attraction for buyers. Business was good, whether for established designers such as Payal Jain and Rina Dhaka, or relative newcomers like Puja Arya and recent NIFT graduate Samanth Chauhan. |
Chauhan, for example, got a confirmed an order with Russian department store Tsum. "We've had around 18 orders booked," says Paras Bairoliya of Geisha Designs. "Domestic stores as well as Sasaa in Istanbul, Ananda in Spain, and stores in Kuwait and Bahrain." |
Domestic stores such as Kimaya, Aza and Samsaara have also been buyers, and it is names like these that dominate talk of business at fashion week, despite Saks and Selfridges hogging media attention. |
"Domestic buyers do the majority of the buying at fashion week," says Pradeep Hirani, CEO Kimaya. "Yet many of the shows are geared solely towards international buyers." |
West Asian buyers were present too, though not entirely pleased with the arrangements. Lamya Al-Samra of LAS Boutique, Saudi Arabia, for example, was a little miffed. |
"We are big and very good buyers," she complains, "but we are having difficulty getting passes for the all the shows at the fashion week. People must realise our buying potential too and not just that of European buyers." |
Al-Samra had placed an order with Phalguni and Shane Peacock last year, but went on to drop them this year because of delays on delivery. |
Are Indian designers having trouble coping with the demands of the global market? Looks like it. "Many Indian designers are finding out that having orders with international buyers is a lot of hard work, work that many may not be ready for," says an industry insider, wondering why Harrods' has dropped Anamika Khanna. |
But the interest in Indian designs is certainly not waning. The front rows for designers Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Arora, Shantanu & Nikhil and Rajesh Pratap Singh, for instance, were bursting with buyers from Harrods, Saks and Selfridges. |
Chantal Rousseau from Bloomingdales dubbed Rajesh Pratap Singh's show "extraordinary", and said that she was also looking at Manish Arora; and Maria Luisa from her eponymous Parisian store also seemed entranced by Singh's show: "That kind of craftsmanship is something that it would be very rare to find in European ready-to-wear, simply because it would be so expensive." |
Says Carmen Busquets, founder and director of net-a-porter.com, which has a network with 90 countries worldwide: "We have signed with Manish Arora and I particularly like the collections of Rajesh Pratap Singh, Ritu Kumar and Rohit Bal." |
So that was it. The overwhelming emotion at the close was one of triumph. For fashion that functions, the Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week was very clearly the place to be. |