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4Ps
Where’s the passion in Indian fashion?
Calvin Klein, Armani, Gucci and others have managed to conquer global mindspace among the classes and the masses alike. But barring a few, Indian
designers are still stuck on luxurious haute couture. Is diversification the key to survival and success? Angshuman paul & romsha singh find out
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 Coco Chanel immortalised the little black dress; Calvin Klein made cool elegance famous and Ralph Lauren started a craze for short sleeve mesh shirts. Giorgio Armani started in 1975 and by the turn of the century was employing more than 4,000 employees, with nearly 300 stores in 36 countries. Guccio Gucci spawned the premier luxury brand and notwithstanding bitter family feuds, Gucci went public in 1995. Tommy Hilfiger was broke when he rejected a job offer from Calvin Klein and went on to establish the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation. Joining this league of charismatic designers are Christian Dior, Versace and Dolce&Gabbana, all of who became billion dollar global brand names from individual artists.
Like life, business too is relative. Compare the achievements of their global counterparts with the triumphs of Indian designers and you realise that far from the glamorous Page 3 pictures that the two simultaneous fashion weeks (March 18-23, 2009) in the capital spawned; India’s style gurus haven’t even begun carving out their brand empire. Sure, a few of them have acquainted themselves with managers and accountants; and some others have even begun haplessly flapping their nascent global wings, but their corporate story lacks the passionate vision and unswerving zeal that have defined the life and times of their American, German, French, Italian, Japanese and English counterparts.
Optimists rant & rave about the coming of age of Indian fashion vistas and blah-blah about global acclaim, fashion weeks, international buyers and so on. They’ll tell you that Bollywood’s ace designer, Manish Malhotra designed outfits for the über cool Michael Jackson when the dancing sensation visited India; Rina Dhaka represented India at the London Fashion Week last year; global style icons like Princess Diana have patronised Ritu Kumar; not to mention the slew of designers that have shown at Paris, Milan, Dubai, Los Angeles or at one or all of the other global fashion weeks. They also throw figures at you - that designer wear contributed 30% to the total apparel export from India in the second half of 2008; that India is the only country in Asia with the potential of creating a Rs.750 crore designer wear industry by 2012; and that the market is growing at 20% per annum (as per the DHL-McKinsey fashion and apparel trade report). But clearly all this has not been enough to create a national designer brand, leave alone a global one, which would leave its footprints on the sands of time.
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 Take away the hype and the hoopla (also the glam and glitz!) and what you see is that India makes up for only a meager 0.2% of the global designer wear market. And the bitter truth is that even within the country, Indian designer wear labels are simply restricted to the extravagant elite – restricted to wedding seasons or the south Asian diaspora. Designer Tarun Tahiliani agrees. “From the long term perspective, one should focus more on the value-for-money or the prêt line category. In fact, this is what many designers in France and Italy have done before,” he avers, explaining that haute couture designer labels sometimes jump way out of the league for even those earning six-figure salaries per annum. For labels like Yves saint Laurent (YSL), Christian Dior and Pierre Cardin, financial success has largely resulted from breaking this barrier between luxury and mass-luxury. In the 1950s, the latter two started licensing their names on products they did not make themselves, while YSL launched a ready-to-wear and easy on the pocket line to appeal to the youth. Others like Chanel went a different route. The House of Chanel played the positioning card perfectly for tapping separate market segments. Today, only the really affluent can afford the exorbitantly-priced dresses from the House of Chanel. Yet Chanel No. 5 can be easily purchased off-the-rack by the mass market – albeit a premium mass market – enhancing the aspirational tag of the premium label. A bottle of the perfume is sold every 30 seconds!
WHERE’S YOUR BRAND, DUDE?
Trade pundits believe that to make their mark in the cat-eat-cat world of the world’s billion dollar fashion business, desi designers need to take some risks and evolve contemporary strategies. With a sharp growth in the world’s millionaire population, the days when luxury was still exclusive are nearly over. In India itself, despite the slowdown, dollar millionaires are growing by the day. Clearly, it’s time for crafted sophistication and exclusivity to give way to creating brands for the fast-growing premium segment of the market, mass-marketing and profit margins. The queen bee of Indian fashionistas, Ritu Kumar, who kicked off her show at the recently concluded Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WLIFW) with her new ready-to-wear, lesser priced collection, takes not a moment to agree. “We have to break the barrier that fashion is only for the rich and make it more affordable to the Indian market,” says the lady behind the 40-year-old House of Ritu Kumar, one of the oldest designer labels in the country.
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