The First Second Fashion Week: as Contradictory as That Sounds
The Willis Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW), which kicked off on Wednesday, marks a number of firsts for the fashion industry in India. The promising fact is that the WIFW is the first-ever second Fashion Week; the detraction from this appearance of expansion is that the event is also the first of its kind to see a decrease in the number of participating designers.
The reasons for the drop in designer attendance vary, though the chief one stems from the fact that, as a second fashion week, it follows close on the heels of the first of its kind this year. Consequently, many of the designers opted out of this week’s event because it was too expensive and too harrying to pull together another collection. Prominent designers such as Malini Ramani, Nandita Basu, Kiran Uttam Ghosh, Raghavendra Rathore, and Satya Paul have denied or deferred their offers of participation.
The proximity with other international Fashion Weeks, and not merely India’s own Fashion Week last April, has also forced some designers to decline because of commiments elsewhere. Ritu Kumar is currently in Paris for some showings, and designer Asish Soni noted that New York Fashion Week, which is coming up next month, poses a conflict. “It’s difficult to do two shows so close to each other,” the designer explained, justifying the decision to stall. “Both being high-profile, you need to put in the same kind of effort for both.”
And whether or not the parallel lack of buyers is cause or effect of fewer designers, or whether the two conditions simply stem from the same scheduling problem, it’s an equal cause for concern.
The Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) has rounded up roughly 70 international buyers and 90 domestic buyers, but big business names such as Bloomingdale’s and Harrod’s remain absent from the list. An unidentified designer who decided not to appear on this week’s runway lamented, “Apart from Maria Luisa and Galeries Lafayette none of the really big buying houses from Europe are here,” also citing the back-to-back scheduling of WIFW and New York Fashion Week as a complication.
On the other hand, the good news is that WIFW was able to court back most of the designers who chose the Lakme Fashion Week over the FDCI’s India Fashion Week earlier this year. And even if the event itself is not an improvement on the standard India Fashion Week, it nevertheless doubles the opportunities for India’s designers. Some designers have already closed on deals to produce their collections–like JJ Valaya, who is on the brink of completing an agreement with Genesis Colours. The industry is taking a step up in the international market, a fact signalled by the attendance of foreign media personnel, having made the trip for their ‘passion for India,’ and a representative from MAC, watching the show to decide if the makeup giant will take on the cosmetics for the event in the future.