After witnessing the marathon line-up of several fashion weeks that were held almost all through 2010, we won’t blame you if you fail to notice that this season’s fall-winter collection of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week is going to be almost a month behind schedule. After all, scoring for passes, garnering connections, memorising designer names and craning for front row seats must be hard and we understand you need a break. But for those in the industry, the news that the dates have been shifted to April 6-10, instead of the mid-March timing, is not very heartening.
Throwing designers a whole month behind schedule could mean delayed delivery of orders and fewer international buyers, which in turn could affect the whole business of fashion. While most are pointing towards the upcoming World Cup Cricket series as the perpetrator, FDCI’s Sunil Sethi says, “End of March also has the festival of Holi, when a lot of people visit their hometowns and that throws a lot of preparation, organising and allocation of venues off balance.” But he does mention that the World Cup Finals and Semi-Final matches would have clashed with the dates, had it not been rescheduled. “We want to keep everyone’s convenience in mind and since we get a lot of domestic buyers, they might have been uncomfortable with those dates,” he tells us.
But apart from the FDCI, the buyers themselves, like Umesh Jivnani of Aza feel that there was no need for the dates to be shifted. “Designers take a lot of time to produce and deliver the product as it is and one full month of delay will make things even slower. Even the last fashion week’s dates were shifted due to the Commonwealth Games being held in Delhi and again we are seeing the same thing happening. If designers need to have orders ready in time for the fall-winter collections to be out in stores by September, then this will make things extremely difficult,” he opines adding that many might lose international buyers as well. So, designers who are in a position to choose between Lakme Fashion Week and Wills Lifestyle, with the former being held on schedule, have already made their decision. Like Shantanu Mehra, of the design duo Shantanu and Nikhil, will be showcasing in Mumbai in order to have their collections out on time. “We look at fashion week as a stiff trade concept, then I agree it’s not fruitful but if we view its fun side then the dates might be a dampener,” he says adding that it could pose a problem only for senior designers who have established businesses and not so much for the younger lot. “If they are still getting an opportunity to showcase their work then it’s a fair deal for them,” he tells us.
However, when has fashion in Delhi been an exclusive trade event anyway? With all the sponsors playing a big role with it being the only fully sponsored event of its kind, it was only practical to shift the dates, says designer Rina Dhaka.