Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week

It's four going on five! In the last 45 days, India has seen as many as four fashion weeks. Be it the second string  Kolkata Fashion Week which is nascent yet promising, or the debutante India Men's Week, not forgetting the established Lakme Fashion Week and the recently culminated India Couture Week and now the fifth one beckons, the Big Daddy of them all - Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. This one is about putting ICW under a microscope. It was jinxed, many felt. Its existence came last year at a time when FDCI saw a split with Sumeet Nair, who is now practically non existent in the fashion frat. This time around, it was postponed from July to August to September to finally in October. Next year, no one knows if it will happen.  The first day stood cancelled, apparently Abu and Sandeep did not get enough passes to accommodate their guests and backed out on grounds of bias. Later a statement was released – We stand cohesively with the FDCI - at least that was heartening! Fashion critics kept insinuating that collections showcased were hardly Couture, barring a select few designers of course. Then there were a few who showed similar collections as shown in previous fashion weeks, perhaps one can't be blamed since fashion weeks are being held too back to back to be able to churn out a new collection. But then which medical study proves that one needs to show at every 'week' to stay healthy? It was nice to see most designers break the bridal genre of couture in India. Like Suneet Verma says, Indian couture is very relevant to Indian fashion, therefore it's necessary to have a couture week in India. We are designers working in a country that has a treasure of incredible textiles, embroideries and other related crafts which enables us to do super luxe, handmade one of a kind custom made clothing this is a very unique experience compared to the west which has really become about the ready to wear and mass volume collections for most design houses. Even a Varun Bahl who had one of the most stunning collections says, I think India demands High fashion and HDIL did the smartest thing to be the first one to introduce it in India. But the sets this time were not much to talk about, were they?  In my opinion the entire Grandeur was beautiful but there is always scope for improvement he politically accepts.

Another point of contention was the presence of too much Bollywood. But then how can one avoid that in the city of Mumbai? Nachiket Barve has a better reasoning, Fashion relates to lifestyle and high fashion is mostly accepted by the Bollywood crowd so even too much of Bollywood is not harmful for a Couture Week. We agree, but only to a point, beyond which it all seems like a farce! A family reunion sort of a thing where one star walks for one friend or wife or sister or whoever The Being Human show had nothing Couture, we we'll hand it over to them for staging fashion for a good cause, how much ever un-couture the fashion may be. FDCI supremo Sunil Sethi said, It was the biggest show ever, yes as far as star power is concerned, it certainly was.

As for the buying, Kimaya's Pradeep Hirani said, Kimaya attends 53 fashion weeks across the globe in a year, ICW is one of them. Well, ain't much to read between the lines here, except for the fact that couture sales is individual centric and doesn't old much relevance for volume stockers like fashion houses and designer stores. Inference: Do we need a Couture Week? Yes. Is this one serving the purpose? Partially. Is it state of the art? No. Will it happen again? Hope so!