Saturday, December 13, 2008
Men's Fashion Week to go ahead despite economic meltdown
Monday, November 24, 2008
Lakme India Fashion Week-2009
The Lakmé Fashion Week Advisory Board comprises key stakeholders from the fashion fraternity such as educational institutions, buyers, media personalities and designers. The list of members includes prestigious names like Dr Darlie O'Koshy, Director, NID; Shefali Vasudevan, Marie Claire; Sathya Saran, DNA-ME; Priya Tanna, Vogue;Pradip Hirani, Kimaya; Alka Nishar, Aza; Gaurav Mahajan - Trent; Designers Wendell Rodricks, Arjun Khanna and Narendra Kumar; Anil Chopra, Advisor - Lakmé, Richa Puranesh, Marketing Manager - Lakmé, Hindustan Unilever; Ravi Krishnan, Consultant to IMG, and Vikram Raizada, Head of Fashion - IMG. They have chosen 8 talented designers for Gen Next, 14 Emerging Designers and 4 Accessory Designers.
LFW has gone a level up in redefining the future of fashion with its latest initiative of an exclusive 'Men's Wear Day' this season. On this special day at LFW, designers will focus only on men's collections.
Another new initiative this season at LFW will be the 'Group Accessory Designer Show' that will showcase 4 designers' collections of accessories like costume jewelry, head gears, handbags and shoes.
Expressing his views on the current initiatives, Mr. Anil Chopra, Advisor, Lakmé said, "This season, Lakmé Fashion Week is going to pleasantly surprise the fashion industry with its new and unique initiatives like the Men's Wear Day, Group Accessory Show and Art Studio. LFW Spring Summer '09, to be held at NCPA Mumbai from 20 to 24th October, will not be just another fashion week to showcase designer collections, but it will be a unique platform to reach out to its varied audiences. The overall response for the number of entries is a proof in itself that LFW has created a benchmark for fashion designers."
Vikram Raizada, Head Fashion - IMG shared his enthusiasm regarding the selected designers. "Lakmé Fashion Week has always witnessed a tremendous response in the number of designer applications. This season broke all records with entries coming in from all corners of the country, making it truly a national event. Season on season, we at LFW strive to innovate and find newer ways of adding value to the fashion industry at large. This season LFW will thus, equally focus on designers who will showcase on the Men's Wear Day and at the Group Accessory designer show."
With these set of interesting new initiatives, the board members are confident that Lakmé Fashion Week will continue its path with yet another outstanding season for the Indian Fashion Industry.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Beyond Bollywood, is Indian fashion going global?
MUMBAI: With voluptuous bodies and a sultry glamour, the models looked like a mirror image of the front row movie stars. Flamboyant dresses held together with crystal straps seemed destined for Mumbai's cinematic royalty. By the time the designer Manish Malhotra took his bow surrounded by slicked males and sensual women, the finale could have been a poster on a Mumbai billboard.
But this red carpet moment was only one act in Lakme Fashion Week. For Indian fashion is aiming to go beyond Bollywood and on to the global stage.
This vibrant city, its spirit caught between the energy of New York and laidback Los Angeles, is determined to establish itself as India's hot and hip fashion capital. It may be competing with Delhi, the country's political epicenter, which held its own fashion week earlier this month, but the Lakme show (named for the beauty giant that is the main sponsor) is showcasing fresh talents.
Mumbai - unlike Delhi, with its glossy new shopping malls - is also creating a retail structure of individualistic stores to support Indian talent. Strung across the city, off the central marine drive known as the "Queen's necklace," these boutiques, with discerning taste and vision, are digesting Indian fashion and serving it up in a contemporary way.
It is the dream of Sangita Sinh Kathiwada, founder of Melange, with its eclectic mix of Indian textures, to bring the burgeoning modern art, movie and music culture together as part of the fashion scene, or as she puts it: "to get the sense of tradition, India's independent filmmakers, cinema people, the art world and the craft world."
For Priya Tanna, editor of Vogue India, which launched last year, fashion week in Mumbai is as a mere infant with powerful potential for growth.
For India itself, the question is how and in which direction fashion will grow. Should the subcontinent play down its own profound culture to aim creatively at the western markets?
Or should it look inward and feed its home market for intrinsically Indian clothes, often destined for weddings and with a resonance to other countries with a similar aesthetic such as Dubai (where Malhotra has a store)?
Or could India ultimately become the hub of a new pan-Asian fashion movement setting a 21st-century fashion aesthetic?
These are big questions that cannot be answered by fledgling or even established designers, although the diversity of vision makes for intriguing shows, presented in a streamlined way under the auspices of IMG, the seasoned fashion week planners.
Sonam Dubal used the sound of flowing water and images of the rivers of Tibet as his version of the elegantly ethnic. This show, with its floral prints, graphic stripes and brick-work of color, was the antithesis of the flamboyant film star look and had both dignity in the silhouettes and subtle craftsmanship like embroidered flowers with tufted centers.
Kiran Uttam Ghosh showed her roots in Calcutta as she captured a sartorial spirit with her soft palette and intriguing mixes of texture. The soundtrack intoned "There are two of us," to refer to the central concept of two materials melding in a single garment or of filmy florals juxtaposed with ribbed knitting. The show just intimated at the powdery stones of colonial heritage.
Drawing on India's tradition of bird motifs, Krishna Mehta incorporated parrots and peacocks into her graceful collection of flowing, embellished dresses where details like puffed sleeves were subtly integrated. But Mehta probably spoke a metaphor for Indian designers when she said: "one side of me wants to fly, the other to come back home."
The Melange's store mix of tactile offerings shows what can be done with the textiles that Kathiwada calls "our unique strength - we are an intensely sensual people." Echoing the stone floor and brick arches of the former wine cellar, effects included crushed traditional pleats, dip-dye techniques for modernized flower prints and updated work in the white-on-white chikan embroidery.
At Bombay Electric, the cutting-edge store in Mumbai that has a contemporary vibe, Priya Kishore develops ideas with designers, citing a successful collaboration with Sonam Dabal rather than buying directly off the runway. Using her own eye, taste and character and working with her husband Deepak Rajegowda, the store melds historic tribal jewels, modern woven shawls and light-as-air interpretations of traditional pieces, all of which could be a template for new millennium of Indian style.
"Subversive retail," says Maithili Ahluwalia to describe Bungalow 8, her lifestyle store built under a Mumbai cricket stadium.
From its antique lamps, "longing to be loved," through carved wooden windows abstracted as modern décor, to table linens and clothing, the byword is "texturation."
All the pieces are Indian, 30 percent are antiques and 70 percent done "with my direction," bringing eclecticism to a sophisticated level.
"I am not a formally trained designer - I try to put things together," says Ahluwalia, who is following the artistic fingertips of her mother, whose bold gold jewelry has a sculptural and tactile style. But Bungalow 8's owner hesitates to claim that there is a renaissance of style in the country and says that "contemporary" is a relative word. "It's a difficult time in India - it's all happening too quickly," Ahluwalia says.
The changes in society, with a 10 percent annual growth rate, is creating an expanding national market for an enlarged middle class. India's taste makers at the top create clothes and objects palatable to a western consumer, but the elaborate and ostentatious wedding world is a local affair. Yet those magnificent saris, glitzy with jeweled embroidery and adaptations of the Salwar Kameez tunic and pants also find a market overseas.
Tanna at Vogue talks about the enormous diaspora of 22 million Indians, while Tina Tahiliani-Parikh of the long-established Ensemble store says that a sizeable part of the embellished wedding clothing is bought by nonresident Indians, patriotically returning to their native country. Weddings require outfits for five days, mostly "cocktail saris," according to Vogue, which will launch a special celebration issue each November to encompass the festival of Diwali and the wedding season. "India is a culture - there is a huge tradition of dressing for occasions," says Tahiliani.
"People come back here to shop from Hong Kong, Jakarta, Africa, Europe. And a wedding is for the whole family. I am a great fan of Indian textiles and craft, I am taking what I think is our heritage, including a lot of draping. But I don't think we can compete with Italy in cutting a jacket."
Draped dresses and tunics are showing up strongly at the Lakme show, but Tahiliani, although "glad for the industry" that got it together thinks that "fashion week is still not about the business of fashion. "As a nation, fashion is so young, it is only in this the last decade - the rules of the game are getting established," says Tahiliani. "And most of the nation is taken up with Bollywood."
Vogue says that a sari worn by a star in a movie can be an instant best seller, which is probably why several Mumbai designers have their roots in costume.
Yet the red carpet events that European designers are trying to penetrate or the clothes that stars wear don't have the same nationwide resonance. Fashion beyond Bollywood does not yet have the same power to seduce off screen.
Source>>http://www.lakmefashionweek.co.in/menkes_fashion.htm
Delhi Fashion Week 2008
New Delhi, Oct 14 (IANS) A 'Tree of Life', an array of bright pink kites and a line-up of oversized paintings Tuesday greeted style aficionados at the inaugural spring/summer edition of the Delhi Fashion Week (DFW) that aims at depicting Indian culture and traditions in contemporary style.
'We wanted the whole ambience to be a narrative about India and its culture - basically from the mid-1980s to modern India, where there has been a revival of tradition,' Sumeet Nair, the consultant of event organiser Fashion Foundation of India (FFI) told IANS.
'Our set up represents modern India as it exists. At the entrance, we have made a Tree of Life that generally depicts growth and prosperity, but we have draped it with a lycra sheet to enhance its shadows and give it a contemporary feel,' he added.
Nair also said that this was the thought that had been kept in mind while creating the entire ambience of the venue.
Thus, as visitors moved through the lobbies, the walls were adorned with oversized black and white photographs of the traditional Rabari tribals of Kutch. These were the works of upcoming photographer Rohit Chawla.
The upper ceiling of the lobby area was covered with bright pink kites, giving the area a very rural feel in a modern set up.
'With this ambience, we want to showcase India to the world, as we see it now. We have used Indian tradition and culture in such a way that it looks contemporary with a hint of traditional values,' Nair explained.
The visitors apart, the designers who are showcasing as well as exhibiting their collections were quite content and happy with the arrangements.
'This place is very chilled out and it is not too crowded. We can easily sit with buyers and discuss the deals comfortably and this is what we are here for. So it's good,' Alpana Gujral of the Azara label said.
Debutante designer Rajvi Mohan, whose show opened the fashion week Tuesday, said feelings swung between fun, excitement and nervousness. 'It could not get better than this,' she said, as she went about setting up her stall in the exhibition area.
Young designer Varun Sardana said the venue gave him positive vibes about his work. 'It is spacious, comfortable and really cool,' he said.
Accessory designer Meera Mahadevia, who was a regular at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW) until the last edition, concurred.
'I just love this place and everything is very well organized. Buyers are showing interest. I am busy since morning and it's just the first day. As a creative artist, I can't compare the two fashion events. we all are here for business and not for comparison,' said Mahadevia.