Fashion’s Night Out India: A Sneak Peak

You probably won’t find the longest catwalk in the world or the Olsen twins bartending or even a street party avec Rag & Bone but you will see is a roster of talented, up and coming designers, steadily gaining credibility in one of the world’s largest emerging luxury markets.

Fashion’s Night Out was started as a global initiative last year, in the throes of the bleak economic scene to get people out of their houses and pulling out their wallets to give the economy some retail therapy. I was pleasantly surprised that it was held in New Delhi, India as one of the 15 worldwide locations. I was disappointed, though, to see that there were significantly more large, international labels such as Burberry, Chanel, etc. This year, however, a lot of niche Indian designers have stepped up and are taking an initiative. These are some of the participating designers I feel show the most promise:

Gaurav Gupta: This Central St. Martins grad has honed his skills at Stella McCartney and Hussein Chalayan. He is slowly inculcating theatricality, a form of clothing art heretofore ignored by the Indian fashion fraternity into his design. 3D prints, structured drapes and hints of baroque define his aesthetic.

Manish Arora:  Probably the most well known of this bunch, Manish Arora is credited to having brought “Indian kitsch” into the forefront of the industry; Paris Fashion Week. Crazy, bold prints and jarring hues, animation references, Flinstones wigs, the works. He designs half of Katy Perry’s cartoon inspired wardrobe, fittingly. This year, he was one of the two designers to design the FNO India tee shirts, applying his style focus and giving us one of the most covetable tees in the FNO franchise.

Malini Ramani: The queen of Indian resort wear, she’s the ultimate caterer to the glitterati and Bollywood crew. It’s lots of high octane glamor and fusion of east decadence meets west cut and shape. There’s a lot of Moroccan influence and flirty, minuscule dresses in metallics.

Rajesh Pratap Singh: The creator of the second Indian, he’s probably one of the few Indian designers who don’t use their Indian roots to make their pieces look exotic but to actually remain true to them. Clean, simple lines, dark block colors and meticulous detailing and embroidery. Another showcaser at Paris and Milan, Singh is the costume designer for the French opera “Padmavati by Albert Roussel”, proving his international appeal.

Abraham and Thakore: Designer trio extraordinaire David Abraham, Rakesh Thakore  and Kevin Nigli are launching a new Mojri platform shoe at the event that visitors can, get this, customize on their own in addition to designing a one-off woven sari and shawl exclusively for the day.  They use a multitiude and a seemingly massive spectrum of traditional Indian textiles which gives them their edge. Think voile, georgette, velvets, rich South Indian silk and sublime linens. Large florals are another overriding trend they tend to reiterate.

Read more about Fashion’s Night Out India here.