Indian fashion designers have made global imprints in spurts. In the mid 70s and the 80s stretching on to the 90s, the Indian fashion design was small and nascent. Neither there were enough designers nor the capability to go global at that time.
Asha Sarabhai who launched in Ahmedabad in 1975 was probably the first Indian designer to gain global recognition. Sarabhai was invited by the legendary Japanese designer, Issey Miyake to design garments for the Miyake Design Studio in Tokyo. Asha Sarabhai later around 1994 partnered with Maureen Doherty to open a boutique store- Egg in London from where she retailed her garments alongside Valentino and Issey Miyake’s.
In the late nineties and the early 2000, designer duo Abraham & Thakore had retailed from prestigious London stores like the Browns, Liberty and Selfridges. At the dawn of the 21st century in association with Sunil Sethi, who ran Alliance Merchandise; almost a dozen Indian designers found space at the Selfridges in London and most sold out. Ritu Kumar had a quaint boutique in London but she catered mostly to the diaspora with her range of ethnic Indian wear.
The Indian Fashion Industry was on a path of regularisation and recognition. National Institute of Fashion Technologies were propping up in cities. The bi-annual India Fashion Week was attracting foreign buyers, and fashion media. Indian fashion designers were getting the much needed attention. But all that is not enough to get a global footprint. Fashion worldwide is backed by Corporates.
Between Louis Vuitton, Kering and Richemont, they own more than 80% of global fashion and luxury brands. It is recently that we have seen corporate power in the form of Reliance Brands Limited (RBL) and Aditya Birla Retail fashion Limited (ABRFL) who are acquiring stakes in fashion labels and with that comes the much needed capital influx.
Yet we have ambitious designers who are individually working hard and making their presence known. There are prestigious trade shows like Tranoi in Paris, Coterie in New York and Pitti Uomo in Milan where vetted Indian designers participate and do business with retailers from South Korea, China, Tokyo, Milan, Paris, New York, Dubai and other such cosmopolitan cities of the world. If you expect our designers to have flagship stores in fashion Capitals, that would be asking for a bit too much. But yes, Anita Dongre, who had partnered with the Future Group has not one but two stores in New York since 2017. Bollywood’s favourite, Manish Malhotra too has a flagship store in Dubai since 2006. Where one is looking to sell globally, one has to cater locally. The merchandise needs to be contemporary and not just be catering to the Indian diaspora.
The three premium fares- Tranoi, Coterie and Pitti Uomo have given many upcoming and established designers the opportunity to share shelf-space with global brands. Rohit Gandhi+Rahul Khanna, Ranna Gill, Suket Dhir, Dhruv Kapoor, Rina Singh of Eka, Aneeth Arora of Pero, Rajesh Pratap Singh and others have made exports a sizable chunk of their business. Unfortunately during COVID times the exports shrunk-up as there were lockdowns and shipping bans but things are looking up again.
Reliance Brands Limited had a joint venture with Rahul Mishra whereby they will have a greenfield project of Rahul Mishra’s contemporary pret-a-porter line that will be retailed from flagship stores in Mumbai, London, Paris, Dubai. RBL has plans with other brands to take Indian fashion labels global. Aditya Birla Group’s ABRFL has similar plans. It is only a matter of time before we see an Indian Fashion label next door to a high-fashion European or American label in various fashion districts.
Text by Jaydeep Ghosh
Image Courtesy: Rahul Mishra, Dhruv Kapoor, and Rina Singh
Find more about the Indian Fashion Brands and Designers:
https://ekadesignstudio.in/pages/designer
https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/artist/oral-history/asha-and-suhrid-sarabhai
