KFW

Someone recently just told me about KFW. I thought Kolkata Fashion Week, it turns out KFW now means something else too - Kerala Fashion Week! Am not even going to begin by saying the usual yet another fashion week speech, because at this point that seems like such a rhetoric. Shocked? No. More like disgusted! I mean am all for Indian tradition and heritage and protecting the old and reviving the vanishing, but come on, this is  bit too much you'll have to agree?!

So still wondering why am venting about this ridiculous proposition? Here is a look, for your eyes only - don't say I didn't warn ya...

 

  

  

  

 

Jury? What that?

So then another season. Autumn|Winter 2010 is here and the race to the season has already begun. In the league of fashion weeks in India, today perhaps this is the oldest and the biggest at the moment. Almost every designer dreams to be have a prime slot on the seasonal schedule - which more often than not are difficult, political and ofcourse expensive. Usually there is a lot of activity at the venue; models, media, celebs, wannabe's and ofcourse the desiners all trying to put their best foot forward and viying for attention.

Usually I enjoy the fashion weeks, it's about fun, friends and fashion for me, although lately at Wills its only about Friends. The fun and the fashion has gone out of the window pretty much. And this season it seems that even the fashion is on its way out. Have just recieved an invite to the model auditions. Like each time. But then looking at the jury panel I was a bit surprised: Ashish Soni, Anjana Bhargav, Payal Jain, Vinod Nair, Niki Mahajan, Rahul Khanna, Asha Kochhar, Aparna Bahl.  Barring Ashish(who I love to bits) and Asha I don't see anyone worth their salt on the panel (nothing new). But the rather surprising addition is that of a prominent journo. Now I don't have anything against him, he is perfectly sweet guy. But what is a bit weird is that everyone knows he is the biggest fash-politics guy that there is!! And worse that instead of being free and fair is paid for and unfair!

I know that we in India love to ape the west - where there is a fashion journo on the panel - but this particular addition is just scary.

Sigh!

For all those girls who want to still come to the auditions, here is the address:

Venue: Sunil Sethi Design Alliance, 209 Okhla Industrial Estate, Phase-III

Date: 2nd February 2010


Time: 1.30 PM onwards

PS: If you're coming to audition, remember to carry your lunch.

Afterhours

Dear Reader,

I dont know who you are or if you actually even read what I type in here. But I know that you exist, because my little map of the world traces you to your city each time you visit me. I know I havn't been writing much lately, which is a bit sad on my part, but fashion wise there isn't much what is happening here as of now.

I normally don't visit new fashion stores,  its no point really, its the same garments and the same fashion statement which the designer is trying to make in their studio. Besides, there aren't any stores in the country which actually take fashion seriously-in terms of their decor or the window displays. They all stick with the tried and tested formula-give the customer what they want, not perk them up and treat them intelligently and give them something they 'might' want.

But all that is set to change with a new store which opened recently and of which I had the chance to visit. After hours in Hauz Khas Village is such a store which has single handedly taken upon itself to change the way we see fashion stores in the country.

Established by 6 designers themselves, there is no middleman to cheat them of the money which they will make from the sales. Also absent is the same boring mannequin displays with sales women who run around you all the time. Spread across three floors, with a quaint lake as the view, the store sells very quirky one of a kind pieces, with a made to measure area on the top floor. There is also a section for  beautiful yardages for your home and furniture pieces which are made on special orders.

So next time you are in the heritage village on this side of Delhi and feel the urge to spend some money on designer outfits which arent available anywhere else in the country,  drop by at Afterhours.

Designers at the store: 11:11, Azara,Mayank Mansingh Kaul, Morphe, Pèro and Peter D’Ascoli.

Mon-Sat 11 am to 7 pm
A-18, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi
afterhours.in, info@afterhours.in

The Kingdom of Love

At the dawn of the contemporary Indian Fashion Scene...there were just a handful of designers. The first ones who came out of the fancy design institute - NIFT. Most of them went on to be stalwarts of the nascent industry.

JJ Valaya is one of them. He is someone who built his empire of fashion on excess and rich fabrics, designs which were inspired by royalty and the wealth of Indian kings. Wearing his outfits became a matter of pride for more brides and grooms at weddings as they wanted to project the image of being rich. JJ soon became stuff of legends as ge went deeper into his roots to fish out inspirations and some long lost traditions of making outfits and styles.

And then came a series of interesting designs which perhaps fell flat on the ground. Men in skirts. By no means I love a gorgeous hunk in a kilt but not the long flowy skirts which are so reminscent of the ghagra traditions. It began from a season and then went on to a repetitive nature of JJ's clothes. Now each of his shows are not complete without any of them..what began as a fantasy Kingdom of Love is today the crazy design guy who makes outfits for God knows who!

What I really want to know is who buys these weird outfits? Why does he make them? If you will notice JJ no longer shows up in any fashion magazine or is hardly ever talked about as a prominent designer.

What the hell happened?

Yet Another Fashion Week

Fashion seems to be everywhere we look these days. From the tiny, unknown lanes to the upscale luxury malls. It seems to be defining the way we look at people. We are increasingly becoming habitual of checking to see what the person is wearing, what bag is it or if the outfit was repeated before.

While all of this could mostly lead to something good - more business for the industry, there are somethings which could hurt in places where it hurts!

Take the case of the multiple fashion weeks in the country for example. We have the main bigger events - Lakme & Wills and now there is a Kolkata Fashion Week, Ahemdabad Fashion Week, Pune Fashion Week, Bangalore Fashion Week, Chennai Fashion Week and now an International Fashion Week!

While these will certainly provide a lot of oppurtunity to all those who want to show their creativity and talent, these events will also encourage enough of riff-raff to be in the lime light. Where is the safety valve which checks these people into showing their garments and torturing others in return? Maybe the IPC should now institute a new law which will put such creatures of bad taste behind bars!

Then ofcourse there is the case of what image of India do we represent to the world? With so many multiple events, how dot he buyers choose? Who do they choose? These multitude of events only end up creating chaos and confusion.

And even as I stop myself from going to yet another fashion week, I know I will be reading about it and wondering where does it stop? SIGH!

Front Row Queen

Every runway show at the fashion week has its media politics. Which magazine gets how many seats, who is a media partner and who is just way to important to supercede all. Its a slim hierachy which exists and is followed to the tip by the PR executives. Those sitting in the wrong places are unceremoniously asked to vacate and move on at the back, where all you can see is the heads of people and how much dandruff they've got.

But there is another thing to be said about the Front Row Royalty. Most of them have no clue of fashion, most of them dont even know what it means to sit or just how to sit in the front row. At one of the runway shows I saw one famous so-called-fashion-journalist masticating a big ball of chewing gum in her mouth as the models went by. It was her idea of being cool. Unfortunately for her in innards of her mouth were often captured in the pictures taken  by the photographers.

Another thing about the media Queens in the front row is how they rush to the loo right after the show. The first time it happened I thought the girl actually was bursting to go! The second time I caught her in the loo while I was washing my hands. The girl had no apparent bladder problem, she was infact rushing in to check her make-up and fix her hair. All this for someone who wont even get noticed, worse would not even be able to talk any sense if she was asked a pointed question about the collection.

India seriously lacks sensible fashion journos. All we have are the ones who are too busy doling out favors to their boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends who're girlfriends and sometimes just because they want to sleep with the designer! Sigh!!

To Be or Not To Be...

Sometimes, there are things you do for love. Those are things which you have no control over and you expect nothing in return. In the world of fashion too, one does similar things, for example you could walk the runway for someone out of love or sit in the front row or be backstage for moral support or just be there with a glass of Jack Daniels on the rocks in times of crisis. Recently, I too did something out of love. Sat through a torturous journey of clothes, worse through the hugely sad turn of events. The occasion you ask?  Designer Sanjana Jon's show.

 

I share my personal relationships of mutual admiration with a whole bunch of people, some of them are actors, directors, models, designers, artists and so on. One of them is the Diva Sushmita Sen. She was on the runway and I had to see her, more so because  I wanted to see the oodles of weight she's lost recently - of which I was being told constantly.

 

So, there I am waiting for the show and suddenly its the 3rd Degree! Hideous outfits bought from Lajpat Nagar reared their ugly head and took me by surprise. No sense of aesthetics or even a basic understanding of what is a collection was the obvious statement of the day. And more so, the celebs werent spared even.

 Then I heard the real Truth. The only reason Sanjana did  the show was because of a main sponsor, she bypassed the 'Jury' for selection because of the money shown. And then just bought clothes from wherever she could. If there were any celebs who looked even half worth their salt was because they were wearing clothes from their 'OWN WARDROBE'.

Well Sanjana surely gave the phrase Do It Yourself a whole new meaning.