| FASHION India now has two fashion weeks, and you know what? Competition is making them all the more exciting.
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| As New Delhi’s Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week rolls around in three weeks (the madness kicks off April 5 at the Grand), there are certain things to prove.
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| Lakmé Fashion Week, the product of Lakmé and IMG, both of whom parted ways late last year with fashion governing body the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), will begin in Mumbai a week earlier, from March 28 to April 1, thereby neatly splitting the market for buyers, if not the wider audience.
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| The breakaway team has been able to attract quite a bit of talent to their show in Mumbai — Mumbai-based designers, such as Falguni and Shane Peacock, who previously had to drag their collection all the way to Delhi, have apparently breathed a sigh of relief and decided to stay in Mumbai, but there have been other moves as well, such as Kolkata-based designer and usual fashion week superstar Sabyasachi Mukherjee, and Goa-based Wendell-Rodricks.
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| Even some designers from Delhi seem to prefer to make the move down to Mumbai to show their lines, such as Anshu Arora Sen who feels she has a better market base in Mumbai, and Suneet Varma. With the film fraternity based in Mumbai, the new Lakmé Fashion Week is also the choice of many designers who work with Bollywood, such as Manish Malhotra.
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| However, FDCI has been organising India Fashion Week since 2000, and it is not easily intimidated. For one thing, it has signed up 80 designers, and has managed to keep most of the leading names in the country, such as Manish Arora, Rohit Bal, Ritu Kumar and Tarun Tahiliani (at least one of the bigger names, though, Ashish Soni, will now be showing in Mumbai).
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| FDCI has brought in S2, headed by Dutch designer Walter Dommers, the company which helps organise London Fashion Week, as consultants to help the show run smoothly, and has incorporated another ramp so that set-up times between shows can be managed more efficiently.
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| There will also be an overwhelming number of new faces in the contingent of models marching down the ramp; out of 64 models to participate this year, a large chunk will be new faces selected by audition. For the first time ever, there will also be international faces, Claudia Horn from Brazil and two models from Serbia.
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| A representative from PDM, the company hired to organise the five-day event, said that “Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week will be a milestone in the history of the fashion industry in India. For the first time in six years of the history of India Fashion Week, there will be an international event director. Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week will also be a bi-annual affair from now on. Two separate season specific collections, in line with international Fashion Weeks, two ramps in two separate Main Stage areas... all these provide more opportunities for more shows, new talents and greater participation from the corporate world as well.”
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| Let the Weeks begin. |
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