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Stars nurture designer dreams
Stars themselves seem to be nurturing ambitions to turn fashion designers.
While fashion designers are queuing up to get stars to walk their fashion week runways…stars themselves seem to be nurturing ambitions to turn fashion designers. Direct conflict of interest?
No, not quite, it’s just that the leading men of filmdom are taking brand promotion to another level altogether. While earlier this week, the superhero cape later next month with Krrish, will don the designer cap when his line hits the shelves this may.
“This exciting line is infused with my personal touch and is in sync with the fashion preferences of today’s youth…working on the ‘Signature Line’ range has been a very fulfilling experience for me,” Hrithik has been quoted as saying.
The two are just following a trend that is widely popular in the West. Everyone from Madonna to P Diddy to Jenniffer Lopez has put their names on sweatshirts, footwear and lingerie. In India, the groundwork seems to already have been laid when Provogue launched their winter line inspired by Amir Khan’s Rang De Basanti.But according to sources, this may just be the beginning of a trend in Bollywood and is only a natural progression from sports stars turning merchandise hawkers.
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| John Abraham gave his design inputs for a signature line of jeans that would hit the market later this year. |
Retail analyst Sushil Dungarwal of multi-brand discount store Loot dismisses the signature collection trend as nothing more than a newer version of a marketing stunt. “The brands are just trying to piggyback on the celebrities…if someone is a good tennis player, it doesn’t mean the customer would like what they design,” he says.
According to him, the experience that Adidas had with the Tendulkar line and others have proved that these stunts are short-lived. “It’s just a matter of putting your name to a collection. I doubt if John Abraham would be sitting down to actually design the jeans.” Provogue’s Salil Chaturvedi might admit that Bollywood’s biggies have spectacular reach, he rubbishes the possibility of launching a signature line inspired by their brand ambassador – Fardeen Khan. “As far as stars giving inputs to designer lines is concerned, all these stars use designers in all their movies, so them creating designs seems to go against their core competencies,” he quips.
