It sounds impressive. Forty top designers coming together tonight in one grand fashion show to celebrate the scrapping of Section 377, bringing the curtains down on yet another edition of the country's biggest fashion event, the India Fashion Week. Yet, between the green rooms and the front rows, tongues are wagging. Has the Fashion Week lost its mojo?
The setting and the showstoppers were intact; yet, there were tell-tale signs—many top designers stayed away and the number of days (and shows) were cut down. The fees of models were reworked from per show to per day, and outstation models were told their travel would not be covered, as per a leading choreographer. A couple of top female models THE WEEK approached refused to comment.
Alarm bells started ringing earlier this year after e-commerce giant Amazon pulled out as the title sponsor. Amazon sponsored the money-guzzling jamboree (despite the cost-cutting and shortening of schedule to just four days, this edition cost more than Rs 10 crore) for just three-and-a-half years, compared to the predecessor ITC Wills' nine years and launch sponsor Lakme's six years. There were rumours swirling weeks before the event that this edition may not even take place. The apparent reason? Organiser FDCI (Fashion Design Council of India) not finding a sponsor to replace Amazon.
Sunil Sethi, the president of FDCI, himself admits that there was some difficulty in getting a title sponsor before Lotus Makeup, a mass-market cosmetic brand, came on board. The tie-up with Lotus was announced barely days before the Fashion Week was supposed to kick-off.
Compounding matters, FDCI also did not have a title sponsor for its previous event, the prestigious India Couture Week in July. Sources say Sethi himself pumped in the money to keep the event going, though Sethi claimed that they were only trying a new format whereby each designer had to find their own sponsor or pay him for the logistics. “I am a businessman first and FDCI president second,” Sethi says, adding that the whole perception that the Couture Week did not have a sponsor was an error. “We did have a jewellery brand as the main sponsor, but I could not give them the title as every designer had an associate jewellery brand as part of his show and they would not have liked to have a rival brand headlining the show,” he says, a wee bit unconvincingly.
From a era when the India Fashion Weeks were the sole and supreme fashion event in a country starved of fashion and glamour, today there is probably a fashion week being hosted in your colony, for all practical purposes! There is one for bridal gowns, one for resort wear and one even for underwear (politely termed 'Intimate Wear') happening regularly. Of course, not to forget 'fashion weeks' organised in towns from Guwahati to Dehradun regularly.
Even shopping malls from Ludhiana to Jaipur to Kochi organise fashion events in their atriums on a regular basis, and these have instant sponsor support, too, considering that the brands may be present in the same mall and a show helps them market their products better. It is this realisation, probably, that has made FDCI add an 'exhibition sale' to the Fashion Week this time around, which will extend till Monday, featuring stalls by leading designers. Just don't call it a Diwali mela, though!
“The problem is not that of FDCI,” argues a leading fashion designer. “The society has changed, markets have evolved. Brands, right from designers to luxury to high street have mushroomed, but with all the financial uncertainty going around, consumers are not spending money like they used to.” The result? “Brands and marketeers are looking for specific tools to promote their products.”
That's bad news for the India Fashion Week, which has dealt with declining marketing support and media coverage in recent years, compared to the frenzy it used to get in the earlier years (probably explains its recent tie-up with a leading Delhi daily as partner). But Sethi is not rattled. “We are bigger and better,” he declares, “FDCI has enough funds to run 7-8 such events for a few years even without sponsors!”
Without naming Lakme, the cosmetic brand which was the launch sponsor of the India Fashion Weeks from 2000 till 2005 and then had an infamous falling out with FDCI and launched their own spin-off 'Fashion Week' in Mumbai, he adds, “Sometimes fierce competition can generate such rumours. Maybe it is bothering someone that another make-up brand has taken up the sponsor title.”