I have seen and heard so many scams in my 24 years in fashion. But the biggest one came in my 18th year, the alleged formation of the Fashion Design Promotion Council (FDPC).The announcement of the same was followed by much fanfare first and a lot of fireworks later, but no one is talking about it now!
When I started writing on fashion there were only a handful of fashion designers in India. I remember one designer during my meeting with him told me that his fashion feature was coming in Vogue magazine. In those days it was so big that we used to write about it in the papers. Hearing it, I was excited and I wrote a 300-word story with a photo of the designer in the paper. As I write this blog, I still await the feature to come in the magazine. Continue reading…

There was a time, not so long ago, there were only a handful of fashion designers in India. Those days, whoever were in the business did their job seriously.
Soon enough, many more got the whiff of glamour that comes free with fashion designing. And the profession called fashion designers started mutilating and before we knew what happened there were a battalion of designers in the industry vying for attention, mostly from the media.
This mostly consisted rich, bored housewives coming out through their kitchen doors with a copy of a fashion magazine and a masterji. They found it easier to copy from the magazine, put some embroidery on them and of course stitch their labels on them as well. Many of them, with their ability to throw cocktails and grab media attention because of their connections with prominent society faces, thus became fashion designers in the eyes of the ignorant (but yet powerful) media and thus in the eyes of the public as well. Continue reading…

A few months back, I had the opportunity to meet Francois Henri Pinault, chairman of PPR, the conglomerate that owns the Gucci Group.
As you may know, Gucci Group has several luxury labels under its umbrella such as Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Bedat & Co, Sergio Rossi, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, etc.In the course of our talks, he mentioned to me that he was impressed with The Emporio mall in Delhi that houses many luxury brands under one roof. Though, to me, it’s somewhat got a Arabian feel to it with its ornate interiors and palm trees, I thought what Francois said was right. After all he is the man who controls half of the world’s luxury brands, so he should know. Continue reading…