India Fashion: Some Names

As I said in a previous post, I am at Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai as a guest of IMG the organizers of the event. After receiving two comments from Fashion Traveler regarding Dehli's fashion week, I went to the site of the Indian Fashion Council's fashion week. Imagine my surprise to find it was called Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week. Sponsorship abounds.

Most of the designers I spoke with are eager for global recognition -- and one can see why with the heavy Indian influence on Western runways -- but I think only a handful would sell easily there. (My personal favorite of the week was that of Anand Kabra, who is from Hyderabad but studied at the London College of Fashion. I'll put up some photos as soon as I can).

It must be frustrating to see designers like Matthew Williamson rise to success on the back of one's native prints and styles, but I still think India's designers would be best to pay keen attention to their home market. This week Gucci opened its first Indian store. Vuitton's sales are growing 50 percent a year here and many more brands are on the way. (Later today I am meeting with the man who brought Gucci to India, Mohan Murjani.) India has a much stronger dress sense that other developing markets like Eastern Europe and China, so I think it will be interesting to see how the big brands meet that challenge, but one can not ignore the power of a glossy advertising campaign and a giant marketing budget. Already Vogue, Elle and Rolling Stone are here to showcase those ads and these designers won't be able to compete against those kinds of budgets. But they do a key advantage -- they're already here. I think they should focus first on winning the new consumers that the rest of the world is coming to capture and focus later on their own plans for global expansion.

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