Once again, I’m in Mumbai...it must be Fashion Week! Sitting in the NCPA for many hours, walking the booths, dining and sociali-sing way too late in the evening, getting into my hotel room never earlier than 2 a.m., trying to recollect and describe a week of beautiful clothes, great potential, wonderful parties, exquisite homes, new shops, some disappointing collections, repetitive advice, making new friends, enjoying the old ones, celebrating my birthday and observing more changes for everything that is India today. I think it can be a book…but I’ll try to summ-arise it all in one go....

I can always count on seeing clothes that I love at Lakme Fashion Week (LFW), both on a personal level and a professional one. There are so many talented designers showing here and a promising crop of GenNext and Emerging Designers. They have given LFW a boost and mission and they all deserve the support of the entire fashion community.

This season’s breakout new collec–tion from Aneeth Arora and Chinar Farooqui for GABA had our international contingent in and out of their booth all week…admiring the modern and fresh take on classic Indian shapes and dresses in the lightest of layers of black and white checks and stripes. Promising and expensive new looks exclusively in soft white knits and woven fabrics came from Manish Gupta. Anuj Sharma continued to display his intellect and acumen in creating an entire collection based on one piece of fabric bordered with grommets. Wrapped and folded in an astounding number of ways and fastened with wire coils and leather straps, he wowed us all with his ingenuity, simplicity and implicit modernity.

From the tried and true, consistently good collections were presented by Sabyasachi, who chanelled Frida Kahlo to produce a total package where the set featuring clotheslines strung across the theatre, the shadows they formed, the music, the clothes, the hair and make-up all worked together perfectly.

Nandita Mahtani showed an immi–nently wearable collection of zebra-striped kaftans and tops. Nachiket Barve created a beautiful collection of coats and dresses with all-over appliqué cut outs of florals and patterns. He also listened and learned from the advice provided and had the perfect look books, price sheets (in dollars, pounds and Euros), style numbers and delivery dates…. He is ready for business!

Anand Kabra continues to impress and will definitely go places, along with Vineet Bahl who we can count on each season! Rakesh Agrawal knows his sexy customer well and how to do business too. Anupama Dayal is still refreshing, but needs to push herself and stretch further, Sonam Dubal takes us on a lovely Asian journey and Krishna Mehta knows how to dress us well.

What did occur to me this season, and became very clear to me after so many trips to India, is something that is essentially a ‘cultural’ trait. And while it is part of what I love most about Indians, it is also not helping our industry move forward as effectively as it could. Everyone (well mostly) is really nice here. When friends at home ask ‘Why do you like India so much?’ I constantly tell them, ‘Everyone’s so nice, the people are friendly, generous, very open and warm, and they become your friends rather quickly.’

They hardly ever say, ‘No, that can’t be done…I am sorry, this just won’t happen!’ I’ve come to realise that no one wants to disappoint you. So, whether it is in a restaurant with poor service, or a driver who is lost, or a fashion journalist writing a daily column…everyone wants to please and therefore you don’t always get the truth, the right answer or the correct response.

So how does that affect Lakme Fashion Week? India’s fashion industry needs a ‘fashion critic’ who can properly place the Indian collections in context, in this country, right now and tell it like it is. And sometimes just say ‘No!’ There are designers here who will benefit more from a critical review than a compliment. They need someone to say ‘No…don’t do that’. Don’t send that out. No, edit the collection better. No, those shoes are all wrong…you don’t need the huge handbag. The ruffle is unnecessary. The fabric is being tortured…. Stop! The stylists brought in have made huge contributions, but they can only take it so far. The designers need counsel and advice long before LFW. ‘No’ is just not a word used often enough here, to help the designers.

I also look around at the NCPA, a venue filled with the people who love fashion, love clothes, live and breathe the industry…yet, very few people in the audience wear the clothing they are there to write about or purchase the garments. So, who are the designers designing for? This continues to be the $64,000 question. While I proudly wear and promote these collections – albeit a few selected ones – in Mumbai and New York and wherever else in the world my work and pleasure take me, India’s designers still must make the hard decision to focus on the market that serves them best and that they, in turn, can serve. While I am happy to be an ambassador, I do believe that market is in India. There is an international market for very few of these collections and the designers need that reality check – at least for a little while longer.

Own the domestic market, control it and dominate it before your colleagues from across the seas far and wide push you out of your own home. The world is coming to India, they want to experience India, they want to buy Indian…not what they can buy in any and every other city in the world!