Not fashioning a business

The country may have many things to thank the Indian fashion weeks for: a new lexicon ("wardrobe malfunction", "diffusion line"), eye-candy in the morning papers (and on television), live entertainment (better than theatre for the arrivesti), scandal (thefts in the factories of three Noida designers) and glamour. But after years of relentless argument about the desirability of one or more "India" fashion weeks and the choice of venue city, and stand-offs between sponsors and fashion designers, there's body and mind fatigue setting in, finally. The social set no longer holds its breath if Joey Mathew puts on a few pounds, or loses it, or if Upen Patel walks off the ramp and on to the screen; nor do girls starving themselves for a profession before the arc lights count for anything more than just another career choice.

We should be grateful that the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, which has just concluded at that most hoi-polloi of venues, New Delhi's Pragati Maidan, was less shrill on every count ""there were no controversies, no rip-offs, no tiffs "" but alas, no business either. Okay, maybe that last isn't an accurate assessment of the week gone by. Analysts will tell you that the spring/summer collection is never a strong vantage for Indian designers, that the money is in the local trousseau and festive winter collections, that there were, indeed, buyers at the fair, that of course there was business because, hoopla or not, the fashion week, at the end of it, has to be about money.

Ah, money. It's there, sizzling on the ramp in the form of zardozi and embroidery with Swarovski, in the fine detailing of chikan and the swish of silk, in the price of each couture garment "" all of it in a currency the shade of the darkest dark. Over the years, other businesses have legitimised "" films, art "" but the fashion industry has remained alienated from the economy because it sells off the rack in cash and refuses to account for the size of the transactions it concludes at fashion weeks, not just in New Delhi and Mumbai, but at those la-la capitals of prêt: Milan, London, Paris. The designers who sold from their overflowing trunks in Dubai and Southall may have been replaced by retail czars opening signature stores, but the buzz about biz has remained ephemeral.

That's because when it comes to tangible growth, the industry still draws a blank in a Catch-22 situation that would be comic if it were not tragic. Trapped in an image of their making as the partying set that famously goes to sleep at noon, it is difficult for designers to get access to funding, for financiers to put their money on a breed of people who seem incapable of carrying on a conversation in the light of day. Without the money, designers cannot build either infrastructure or volumes, inhibiting their global ambitions. And in not handing over their companies to CEOs, designers "" paranoid about losing control "" have remained media poppets one moment, media puppets the next. It is unfortunate but true that the apparel and fashion trade needs the designers to march into the taxman's office to pay their fair share of gratuity, so they can show proof of their potential to venture capitalists. The day they do that will be the day they stop being darzis and become owners of serious businesses. For now, there is no sign of it.