Emporio`s new clothes

STYLE

One of the problems that faces luxury in this country is the lack of retail space. Luxury brands need a retail space that fits their product profile and hence a shop in just any neighbourhood market won’t work for them.

Therefore, many of the biggest labels are looking forward to the launch of Emporio in Saket, New Delhi.

Many like Louis Vuitton, Zegna, Gucci have already signed up for space in this mall and can’t wait for the promoters to get it ready and open its gates for business. Alas, that hasn’t happened yet.

But even before the first customer has had the chance to enter Emporio, it already finds itself getting caught in the crosshairs of the fashion fight.

The breakaway faction of the Fashion Design Council of India has announced that the rival fashion week will be held at Emporio at almost the same time as the official fashion week organised by the FDCI.

This has prompted the FDCI aligned designers to compose a letter to Pia Singh of Emporio to “reconsider any decision that can harm” them.

The FDCI designers, which includes big names like Manish Arora, Rajesh Pratap Singh, Ritu Kumar, J J Valaya, Rina Dhaka, Abraham & Thakore, Rohit Gandhi and Rahul Khanna, have appealed to Singh saying that “a second event claiming to have the same mandate is counterproductive and harms the entire fashion industry”.

This column had noted, when the first whisperings of a possible rival fashion week were heard, that two fashion weeks in Delhi were going to make the industry look unprofessional, faction-ridden and immature.

And two fashion weeks all within the same week is likely to compound the problems even more.

Will big-ticket and prestigious buyers like Selfridges, Browns or Didier Grumbach, who hold the key to taking designers to the Paris Fashion Week, be whisked quietly away in the dead of the night from one fashion week to the other in an attempt to prove that both have the power to attract such names to their events?

For Emporio, this negative publicity will do no good. Even though we live in times when any publicity is considered positive, this one time that may not be the case. There is bound to be a negative fall-out that cannot be pleasant or necessary for any retail promoter.

Luxury brands normally shy away from any negative publicity and tightly control the way their brands are perceived.

Though it is unlikely that luxury brands will rethink the Emporio option in the face of an ugly fight between the two fashion factions when some of the dirt could stick to the venue as well, the promoters should definitely look at what the opportunity cost of such an association is likely to be.

Fashion and its patrons rarely forgive ugliness and Emporio could do well to remember that.

(archana.jahagirdar@bsmail.in)