With the end of the fashion’s biggest extravaganza Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week Spring Summer 2011, the fashion seems like floating in the air with all the beautiful designs capturing the zillions of fantasies. The fantasy to own that eye popping ensembles shown on the ramp or ensconcing under lights in some stall. Few get pandered by but few keep knocking again and again. But amidst all these fanatical fantasy trips we iconize the buyers scouting and scanning the stalls with an in built magnifying lens looks (though not for their self, but still fantasies are unradical).
The buyers actually are like a Godly figurine at fashion weeks, the provenance of everything glamorous and glittering. In fact why they shouldn’t be? Creativity is fine but at the end of the day you need the green flowing to let the other survive – As they say the color of life is green. Designers have Jerry Maguire moment when it comes to some potential buyers visiting here from around the world with loads of digits in their cheque books. This time around the buyers from Kuwait (with shrewd bargaining skills), Japan (passive buyers, hard to convince) and France (lively, love to spend time in lounges) dominated the Indian buying scene. The front row cynosures definitely seem like going for new generation designers for Spring Summer 2011. Benoit Julet from mc2 diffusion, France said with his permanently plastered smile “I liked new generation Indian designers, Pero by Aneeth Arora, Rishta by Arjun, Tanvi Kedia……Gaurav Gupta (pointing his finger towards his stall) and looking forward to Varun Sardana. They have nice and practical designs.” On being asked who has he placed orders with, he retorted with a bigger grin “I liked them, so it must be them only.”
Moniko Marchadour, Consultant in Strategy and Operational Creation from Paris was all for Morphe by Amit Aggarwal and enthusiastically showed a beautiful flower appliquéd grey top by Morphe she was wearing.
The buyers from Middle East have always been a consequential part of Indian fashion. Quite warm to talk they appreciate the Indian colors and embroideries with western cuts, which they find very saleable in their markets. Specifically the buyers from Kuwait, a small country where every buyer knows other and what he is buying or selling, seemed like flooding the venue this time with handy hassling. I found a young guy from Kuwait in a stall, saying, “Even Moschino sells it in this amount. Why should I buy your product? That’s Italian and it’s Indian.”
Not daring enough to accost him, I luckily met with Hiba Al-Ateeqi, Managing Director, Darusha, Kuwait. A pretty lady in scarf who has been coming here for the last 6 years and has been seen ubiquitously during all these five days was of the view that venue this time is amazing and best ever but the air conditioning is damn freezing. So cuddling herself she said “I was begging Anju Modi for last 3 years for a show and she finally did it. I like her garments like anything. In fact I liked JJ Valaya and Ritu Beri but I am confused where to place the orders as they have no stalls at the venue.” She has placed orders with Hemant & Nandita, Rana Gill and Kavita Bhartia.
Moreover Wasim Ali Sadat from Saudi Arabia, a very frequent buyer at Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week had loads of Reynu Tandon in his kitty.
Catching up with Japanese buyers like Tokomo Inuzuka, Service Master/ Buyer, Beams, Japan. A highly visible and frequent one was a duck soup do. But like always she went all gaga over kitschy designs by Manish Arora.
The buyer duo Chris from England and Kazu from Japan liked Abraham & Thakore, Akaaro by Gaurav Jai Gupta and Pero by Aneeth Arora. A regular at Tranoi, Sao Paolo, Rio and London Fashion Weeks they were at India mainly for cheap accessories like shoes, scarves and belts but found it too expensive to be sold in their market. Jakaal by Sameer Singh fascinated their aesthetic senses specifically.
Lindsey Robers and Heather Pizzarillo of Anthropologie, USA are also in love with the creativity designs of Indian Designers. Lindsey said, “We have come here looking for the Indian embellishments and embroideries in contemporary feminine silhouettes adhering to their brand sensibility and market demand.” Commenting on the kind and extent of alterations they want to suit there weather conditions Lindsey added, “We make slight changes as reducing the embellishment or sometime increasing the sleeve length.” Though they refrained from naming the designers they particularly liked or have placed orders this season, they have worked before with designers like Ranna Gill, Ashish N Soni, Manish Arora, Rina Dhaka and Bian by G Pia Fleming.
