The Naked Design

When the first wave of queer people arrived at the gates, the guards grouped together in a corner for social security. They looked with what sociologists would wrongly call "aspiration" at these men in netted shirts and women who seemed way above marriageable heights. Even the Arabian Sea across the road employed high tide to get a closer look. Hawkers and cab drivers gaped at the backs of the passing women and exchanged immediate analysis in a manner that would suggest their wives were morally superior. Here at the gates, real India ended.

In the lobby of Mumbai's National Centre for the Performing Arts or NCPA, whose official motto is "Arts are not for the privileged few", there were the kind of people who were famous because they were famous. Busy errand boys were given smart orange shirts for if they wore their own clothes they would have exposed our brand new rank of 127 on the human development front. In a room filled with snippets, Liz Hurley's recent adjective Arun Nayar tried to walk away when approached. "You know I don't speak." Standing with him was Rhea Pillai who was the first among the many perfumed people in this huge room to neutralise sadness with the Art of Living. There were many such people here who sometimes congregate to find out what's the purpose of life, and sometimes to find out what's in and what out which is usually followed by, in an excellent rhyme, what's hot and what's not.

In front of a television camera was unsurprisingly Dolly Thakore or her wax model. They had all assembled under one roof to celebrate the Lakme India Fashion Week which the Fashion Development Council of India (FDCI) jokingly referred to as a serious trade exposition. Among the pretty women and far too many pretty men, some of whom looked at one another with unconditional fondness in the gents toilet, there were 300 buyers or stores who had come to see the designerwear. Only about six of them were not domestic, which was a more accurate indicator of just how important Indian high fashion is than the sheer media coverage.

It's a cottage industry that is worth less than Rs 200 crore in an Indian apparel market valued at over Rs 20,000 crore. Designerwear is a $35-40 billion business at the global level in a total garment market of $700 billion. In America, Europe and Japan, high fashion accounts for 5 to 10 per cent of the apparel market. A bit of reality comes in this glamorous lobby when someone slips in the much-feared Indian statistics which in any sphere of life puts this country in its place. Designerwear is less than one per cent of the apparel market in India. This country seems a bit too poor to have so many designers profitably employed despite all their bloated fame. High-end designers regularly rip off their labels from their expensive creations and sell it at one-tenth the price because they don't know how to minimise their dead stock. That's how a Ritu Beri creation, a designer says, lands in anonymity at a store like Sheetal in Mumbai.

In India, high fashion is nothing more than a string of small businesses run by a few talented people who create, and the less gifted who exploit the vacuous side of the media to become brands with recall value. Last year's Lakme event generated merely Rs 15-20 crore in direct business, according to FDCI's Vinod Kaul. So what's more encashable than the many trade inquiries that the designers get is self-promotion. That's why there are too many "off-the-record" quotes from designers about how one foreign fashion house or the other said he or she was the best, all intended to confluence as a news item. "Most designers just want to tickle themselves with free publicity," fashion forecaster Rajiv Goel says. "Look at the clothes in Fashion Week, we are behind the times.We are too dated in the eyes of the international market. There is no effort to do serious research."

It's an industry that, to begin with, doesn't know the sizes of the women it wants to clothe though all designers talk about how "pret is in", or how reasonably priced clothing for upper-end mass purchase is the only way to survive. Until now there has been no sizing research done to fathom the Indian women in different age groups and regions, how they add mass and where. Like a standard groom in search of arranged marriage candidates, Indian fashion hopes all its women are model-like creatures. Sadly, that's not true. "There is no organised attempt to fix these flaws," says Joseph Sam, Rohit Bal's CEO. "It's not even an industry. That's why professional managers stay away from fashion."

Fashion Week was meant to address such problems but the "serious" seminars were all positioned in the mornings around the time when people were recovering from the previous night's half-a-dozen dos. The crowds were milling only around the ramp though they had to wait for over an hour before every show began. There were rude orders for some to get off the front row because someone richer was waiting in the aisle. Socialites like Queeny Dhody changed clothes more than twice a day because there is so much shame in appearing in the same outfit for different shows.

It was a bit difficult to find the press seating in the beginning. There was a time when one could enter a hall, search for the worst-dressed section and recognise the press. But here there were painted and pretty reporters with scribbling pads in hand, who may vanish next season after sudden marriage. The Features hacks never looked so splendid ever before. Even those who rushed straight from work on the first day to answer the call of duty took care the next day to wear uncomfortable clothes and pass current through their hair so that they could go well with the society props. Everybody wanted to look beautiful, even if it was a difficult job requirement for some.

But not all the people in the media section were journalists. There were buyers too whose seats had been usurped by socialites and other indispensables. That was a strategic mistake on the part of the organisers for the miffed businessmen and women had an endless stream of complaints, chiefly centred around how the show was, according to one, "masturbatory", without taking cognisance of the domestic buyers. Rohit Bal would later explain the expression, "What's the use of having domestic buyers? I stock with them anyway. I know them. They know me. Fashion Week is really useful for me if I get new foreign buyers."

The reason why there were only a handful of foreign stores is the timing. Western buyers have already bought stock for the next season. The much advertised foreign player at the show was the French Celine. But its president Jean Loubier crouched over his free coffee in the sponsor's lounge and said, "I am notz here tso buy. I am here tso look." The people he does outsource from are seldom invited to such glamorous events. "Embroidery," he says, "in huge quantities." He does not give a figure but "it's a lot". These are small silent firms that quietly supply labour to stipulated requirements, never to be found beside the ramp.

But even the grumbling buyers fell silent when the lights dimmed and some machine backstage kept unleashing models who all walked looking unhappy out of professional necessity and not because they gave a 30 per cent discount to the organisers. Top female models charge up to Rs 25,000 for a show while the men come for half that much. "Some of these models are encouraged not to wear a bra," a designer says. "That way it's more newsworthy. But not all models comply.Some do of course." By the end of the week, it was clear that the ramp belonged to the women, with or without inner clothes. Men, even in Rohit Bal's creations, despite the frantic screams of "sexy" by misled girls, were not the favoured ones this season. "Out of 55 shows this week," says top model Acquin Paes, leaning on a wall in the lobby, "only seven feature male models". Last year male models got 13 shows.

So when Tarun Tahiliani passes by in a hurry with a warm hello, Paes and another top male Shahwar Ali responded with wide grins but once he is out of sight, shrug and say, "He too doesn't have men this time." In the unwanted world of male models, very few survive beyond their father's demand draft. They become easy pickings in an industry where male designers are known to "feel around a bit", says Ali. "It happens but only the desperate guys sleep around for work," he says. In a shrinking market for male models, back entry apparently is a useful device.

The predominance of women on the ramp, however gratifying it is for a vast section of the population, is another indicator of the fact that such fashion jamborees are disproportionately built around bagging news clippings instead of business. The market for women's wear is larger than for men's clothing but the sharp reduction in menswear this year from last year could not have been dictated by market forces. Girls bring in coverage. The super hype around the event has surprised designers themselves. "Isn't there anything important happening in the country?" asks Wendell Rodricks. Anita Dongre, a no-nonsense designer with sharp business instincts, is overtly repulsed at how a starving media has made the profession "a society circus". She moved to pret because, "I didn't have time to waste with a socialite, spend half a day sitting with her and pampering her as she decides what she wants. Several designers have moved to pret because that's more meaningful. These are clothes for ordinary women, for working women and college girls. But the media is so obsessed with the glamour part of it".

There is a disturbing trend emerging out of the hype around fashion. Lower middle-class girls travel from their humble suburban homes to fashion institutes in blind aspiration, not knowing that the path they have chosen is easier travelled if they came from South Bombay, if they went to those parties that the right kind of people attended. As model Nafisa Joseph is conducting a fashion quiz at NCPA, the great Indian divide apparently has slipped into the building. In the audience there are fashion students who are, in a generalisation, bred on ghee and went to convent schools. They are smartly dressed and fluent in English. Then there are these girls sitting in the back rows in their cheap Fashion Street tops and skirts. They are easy to identify and place.

Trupti is from Nirmal Niketan Fashion Design Institute. She has paid Rs 20,000 for the year and will gladly spend another Rs 10,000 "or however much I can afford" on fabric. She admits, "It's easier if you belong to a rich circle but I will try very hard to make it. "

Girls like Trupti are not at the bottom of the fashion food chain. It runs much deeper, into the very underbelly of the classic Indian society—the people who actually make the clothes. They are the daily wage tailors and embroidery workers. They live far away from South Bombay's NCPA. In the Santa Cruz suburb, near a smelly dairy farm, down narrow lanes, some of which are narrower than a regular ramp, up a few flights of rusty ladders, there is a 150-square-feet room where a dozen boys are in the middle of painstaking embroidery work. No complaints. They make Rs 10 an hour for an eight-hour shift. If they choose to work for 14 hours as most of them do, they make Rs 200.Have they seen a fashion show? Nobody answers as though they will speak only if they are paid. Finally someone says, "on TV".