It’s not going to be just nostalgia as Lakme Fashion Week x FDCI marks its 25th anniversary this week.
Taking place until Sunday at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai, the event is going to be a gathering of stalwarts, who mean to reflect and remember — but also to mark a moment of maturity of the fashion industry in India. The first edition was launched in August 2000.
An important focus, the business leaders of the industry told WWD, will also be to take a hard nosed look ahead at what the next 25 years should be about.
“In the U.S. there was a popular advertisement that said, ‘You’ve come a long way baby.’ That really sums it up,” Sunil Sethi, chairman of the Fashion Design Council of India, said in an exclusive interview. Having been a witness to the industry over the last 25 years, and the president of FDCI since 2008, he’s closely watched and helped lead the changes.
“I want to say we’ve really come a long way in the fashion industry,” he reiterated. “There has been a transition from the long period when we described ourselves as a ‘nascent industry’ with a lot of self-questioning — ‘Why aren’t there more stores around the country? Why aren’t we taking more part in international events? Why is India not better recognized in terms of fashion?’ All that has changed. We have been stepping up as a recognizable force, and are ready for the bigger question: what will we do in the next 25 years?” he said.
“My proudest moment of the last 25 years — the statement that the Indian consumer is happy to flaunt Indian designers — of the relevance of the Indian designer to the consumer — and the eagerness to wear Indian designers’ creations. The consumers want to know ‘Who is the new kid on the block? What’s their new range?’ he added.
“I flaunt a lot of Indian menswear brands and they ask who I am wearing, so many have come out in the last five years, and people are trying out new brand names — some of whom have a higher turnover than established ones. They are being ‘discovered’ and praised for their innovative designs and creativity everyone is looking for,” he said.
The first, seven-day event in August 2000, Lakme India Fashion Week, was a partnership between the FDCI, beauty brand Lakmé and management group IMG. In 2006, a major split saw IMG and Lakme continue with an event called Lakmé Fashion Week in Mumbai, while the FDCI moved on to Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in New Delhi. The rivalry and competitiveness remained intense for years.
Lakme Fashion Week changed its format to the current season in 2010, a popular move with designers and buyers. In 2015, FDCI saw changes as well, with it changing to Amazon India Fashion Week, and in 2018 with Amazon replaced by Lotus Makeup.
The fashion weeks went digital during the pandemic in 2020, and Reliance bought the IMG stake in India. In 2021, FDCI, Lakme and Reliance Brands came together, in a major unification — creating a single fashion week, alternately held in Mumbai and Delhi.
This season, the sense of unity is combined with both nostalgia and an urgency to do business, looking to global markets as well as the fast growing domestic one.
“There has been a lot of evolution,” Jaspreet Chandok, group vice president of Reliance Brands, noted. “Twenty-five years back the industry did not exist, the last 25 years was spent in building the industry. Now designer brands have been and are increasingly ready to become global brands and also for significant growth in India itself. Corporate funding has come in and more designers have been creating infrastructure and systems in their businesses that focus on growth rather than just getting by as young entrepreneurs would.”
Nostalgia, in a sense, has also caught everyone off-guard in different ways.
“I always thought of myself as the young one in the industry but this is my 19th year in the industry, associated in one way or the other. People still say, ‘You’re that young guy doing it’ and nearly a decade has passed with leading Lakme Fashion week itself,” he said.
It’s also about memories.
The first Lakme Fashion Week had Wendell Rodricks and Tarun Tahiliani as grand finale designers. In 2001, the grand finale was presented by a trio of top designers inspired by Lakmé’s “Shimmer, Shine and Sparkle” collection, where Manish Malhotra presented Shimmer, Rina Dhaka gave Sparkle to her creations and Rohit Bal put the Shine on the ramp; in 2002, another trio — Monisha Jaising, Rajesh Pratap Singh and Suneet Varma — were inspired by the “Brilliance” collection from Lakmé.
Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor Khan and designer Gaurav Gupta on at his closing show of Lakme Fashion Week x FDCI in October 2021. Photo: FS Images / FDCI x Lakme Fashion Week / RISE Worldwide
Vaqaas Mansuri
“Obviously we are digging through the archives, there’s so much history so many interesting anecdotes and photos that are emerging, creating that trip down memory lane,” Chandok said.
As for what lies ahead this season, he said, “You will see more global stakeholders this season than you might have seen in the past five years. That’s a strategic focus we are creating, including representatives from fashion weeks from across the world, and global stakeholders in fashion, the intent to open international doors for Indian designers that we are planning to do.”
He spoke about being more proactive than reactive through changing times.
“The speed at which trends are changing now significantly faster than they used to a decade back, and you know, the fashion week has to reorient itself or it becomes redundant over a period of time. We would like to stay ahead of the curve.”
Things have been keeping up in various ways over the years, he noted — “we keep reorienting new ways of communicating, new ways of showcasing, new ways of building business for young and emerging designers — that will continue to be an ever evolving conversation with us. The only way to stay relevant is to create value for the industry, we work from that viewpoint,” he said.
According to the different stakeholders in the industry, the most noteworthy fact has been the consistent partnership of beauty brand Lakme.
Sunanda Khaitan, vice president of Lakmé India, showed no signs of being jaded — but rather described the upcoming week with anticipation and as “part celebration and part absolute nostalgia.”
“As we have been curating it, I have been taken by the width of Indian fashion, how international it has been and, even as we look back at previous designs, how contemporary they are for today and how much fashion is cyclical,” she said, noting that it has been a “very intense exercise” this time, and how some of the last few seasons have been even closer to her heart. This includes creating the theme of roses and intense Indian colors last year, as it was the last show where Rohit Bal designed his finale. He died last November at age 63.
“It was a democratization of luxury,” Khaitan said.
She spoke about the power of the event and its livestream to take both beauty and fashion to a much larger reach than the audience attending, to more than 30 million Indians.
“We are also doing an opening show with Anamika Khanna with the Akok line; it is a salute to the Indian working women who we feel are underserved — we call it pret in fashion but people have to understand pret in beauty, with working women needing high performance products,” she said.
And what will the opening show be called? Evocatively, it is named “Silver Collar,” marking the 25th anniversary, with other highlights in the week including a presence by Canopy Planet for rethinking materials in fashion and sustainability, a show by FDCI x Moscow Fashion Week on Thursday and another by Rahul Mishra on Friday a closing gala on Sunday.
