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Versace, Naomi to be part of India fashion week!
Celebrated designer Donatella Versace and supermodel Naomi Campbell are expected to attend the sixth India fashion week next month as the country's fledging fashion industry organises its biggest ever extravaganza.
Celebrated designer Donatella Versace and supermodel Naomi Campbell are expected to attend the sixth India fashion week next month as the country's fledging fashion industry organises its biggest ever extravaganza.
The duo, two of the most powerful people in world fashion, would be attending the show of a young Indian designer selected through a reality show by fashion week title sponsor Lakme.
The designer who survives the intrusive reality show would win an internship with Versace, for whom it is a nice entry point into one of the world's biggest markets as it prepares to spread its wings in a post-textile quota world.
"There is a buzz and the attention is coming. We need to now sustain it," said Rathi Vinay Jha, director general of the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) whose fashion week is the biggest b2b event of the industry.
In every way, the fashion week to be held between April 20 and 26 this year would be the biggest ever. The number of participating designers is 61 from 57 last year, fashion shows up from 35 to 39 and stalls growing to 70 from 60.
This would perhaps be the last time that the country would have one fashion week. From next year, two events (spring/summer and fall/winter) following global pattern would be followed.
Last year, the event drew big name international buyers like Saks Fifth Avenue and Browns, and this time the FDCI is promising a mega buyer list, though warning that buyers should be judged by quality and not quantity.
"Even if we, say, have 30 good, serious buyers, that's much better than 60 buyers many of who are not that serious," said Jha. In past years, buyers have come from the US, France, Britain, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
There are four new designers participating at the fashion week this year - Rabani and Rakha, Deepika Gehani, Shantanu Goenka and Mumbai's much toasted Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla.
The fashion business constitutes a mere $2 billion of India's $15 billion textile market but is increasingly prominent with celebrity designers and enormous media attention.
The dismantling of quotas has opened up a whole new vista of opportunity for the industry, though because of India's forte in value addition like hand embroidery, quotas didn't really affect niche Indian fashion much.
The opportunity really is in the ready-to-wear mass market. According to McKinsey, with the quotas coming off at year-end, India will push its share from four percent to 6.5 per cent by 2008 in the $248 billion global fashion market.
Some reports suggest that in the US, India's market share would leap from four per cent to about 15 per cent, and in the European Union from five per cent to nine percent.
Jha said FDCI would play an increasing role in guiding the new designers to make use of this opportunity. "We are focusing on infrastructure building and promotion."
