THE METEORIC RISE OF THE INDIAN LUXURY BRANDS

Adam Levin reports from Wills India Fashion Week on the phenomenon of India’s new luxury brands.

How fab. I have arrived in Delhi a few days early. Now I will have time to walk with Tarun through Lodhi gardens in the evening; sit in the doorway of an ancient tomb and glimpse a couple of roughed-up eunuchs scurrying past furtively, amid the many ordinary Indians having their evening stroll in their salwaar kameez and track pants under wreaths of cerise bougainvillea.

I will have time to grab a cheap Punjabi dinner with Sumant, and that mad creature Sandra Long (a Studio 54 original), who is here again buying antiques for her clients in New York. We’ll pop into Magique for a seafood laksa under the acacia trees, then drop in at Malini’s for an impromptu party. I’ll stay up all night talking with Bandana about life at Indian Vogue. Hang out at Varun the puppeteer’s farm for the day. It’s true: the sheer number of glamorous, genius, funny, switched on Indians I’ve met over the past two years says the more than I could ever write about a country I had always avoided for fear of sensory explosion. India’s fashion gang is beyond fun.

But hey, what’s swelling in the belly of this economic tiger? An unrivalled phenomenon in the developing world it appears: a meteoric rise in local luxury brands. Today’s Passage to India drips with fashion and money. With some skills to rival Paris’s couture salons (and some still lacking), the Hindis are taking on Europe’s most fashionable cash cow. Kinda ‘Watch this Handbag’, if you know what I mean.

I stroll through the 100 000 square feet of Lecoanet Hemant’s new headquarters in Delhi’s new light industrial zone, Gurgaon. The four-storey space is sparse, futuristic, eco-smart and filled – like much of India -- with an air of expectancy: The 180 employees are projected to grow to 800 over the next few years. In 2000, the Indo-French design duo moved back to India from Paris where they had created couture since 1978. “Why stay in a cul de sac?” shrugs the Indian-born, Hemant, chilled this morning in his new jeans line and orange moccasins. “When there are endless highways opening up somewhere else?”

LECOAMET HEMANT METALLIC LEATHER

The endless highways he refers to comprise the subject of my little thesis – clothing and accessories that sell almost within the same price bracket as top European brands. “What makes this so extraordinary,” designer extraordinaire Tarun Tahiliani reels passionately, “Is the many decades of provenance that were necessary to forge the allure of Hermes, Dior or Vuitton. India’s luxury brands are five or ten years old. The speed with which we have chosen our new bastions of luxe is testament to a nation in most opulent flux.”

Significantly, Paris is raising an eyebrow at India’s avant-garde –- designers, Manish Arora, Rohit Bal and Rajesh Pratap Singh all showed on the official calendar last year (no South African designer ever has). Sabyasaachi has hit New York and London. But I am more interested in how this market relates to itself: With a middle class larger than the US’s and a very lucrative market in the Middle East (no need to alter silhouettes) -- thus far, the Western market counts primarily as affirmation.
Gurgaon bursts like a swollen Ganges around the southern arc of this scattered, unpredictable Indianopolis. Last Saturday, Tahiliani opened his own similarly gargantuan operation nearby with a Gold Disco Party for MAC Cosmetics. Entering through the Delhi fog, one beheld bling city. A gold-clad diva flown in from New York, belted out house tracks as we sipped cosmos till dawn.

To the north, Noida’s industrial parks are even larger. Cranes hover and vast glass cubes have appeared since I was here two years ago. And behind the tinted windows of the black, S-Class Mercs hauling through the gravel, some of the country’s staggering 100 000 dollar millionaires are half-watching DVDs or peering out at the timeless parade of cows, auto-rickshaws and jumpy little Tatas. Yes, India is at home with her contrasts.

And so just why is this riche niche booming beyond imaginings? “The consideration of India as a market came very suddenly,” observes Hemant. “Partly because of the very drastic end of quotas three years ago, which coincided with India’s entry into the World Trade Organisation.” The country is also bursting with European luxury: Aside from the obvious culprits, niche brands like Bottega Venetta are booming and Stella McCartney is opening six stores here over the next two years. Socially -- now that socialism is less hip -- India’s new rich have beaten the decadent colonists at their own game: They have their fleets of servants; their pet jets; their palatial retreats in Goa (aka The Punjabi Riviera) or flats in London. So hey, why shouldn’t they open their own Diors?

ROHIT BAL's COLLECTION CREATED FROM SEVEN METALS

We are doing a power brunch at The Park, a Terence Conran-designed boutique hotel with a giant mirror ball over the pool. The mood is relaxed – eerily cosy and familiar for a nation of this scale. Manish Arora, the endlessly witty enfant terrible of Indian Fashion, has recently launched a glittery sunglass range, which comes in a red, patent leather heart shaped case. His new TV show, The Adventures of a Ladies Tailor, will go national tomorrow night, hence the vintage ambassador taxi, hand-painted with Bollywood scenes, and complete with sequinned window shades.

Though I spot just as many Chanels peeking out of the highlighted coiffes, there are plenty Aroras. (I, of course, am wearing mine as I type.) One hears little mention of the humble rupee in these circles -- and more of lakhs ($25 00) and crores ($250 000) – as in “A few lakhs for that handbag” or “A couple of crore on the wedding.” Hindi requires words for such numbers. And in the flood of cash that is modern India, caste has made way for class -- both as social hierarchy and enviable chic.

MANISH ARORA'S DECORATIVE MASTERY ... CAN EUROPE CREATE THIS DETAIL AT THIS PRICE POINT?

I once had an argument with a brilliant graphic designer in Mumbai: What I described as ‘kitsch’, she defended vehemently as ‘vibrancy’ (and therein lies the distortion of an exotic gaze perhaps). Looking back, India has had a particular fascination with luxury most vibrant; the vulgarity of the nouveau crores resides within an ancient tradition of grandeur. Even the poorest rickshaw-wallah will cherish a gleaming, golden, plastic plaque of his favoured deity dangling from his dusty windscreen. Behold the twinkle of a Bollywood starlet. The sparkle of a gemstone studded T-shirt. Oodles of silver wire embroidery. The shimmer of a giant, brass, lotus flower.

The Moghul emperors could have taught Donatella Versace a silk thread or two about luxury; they spared little expense in carving endless sandstone forts or jewelling their voluminous robes. So today, a $10 000 price tag on an intricately jewelled wedding sari by say, Tahiliani or Abu Sandeep would not be anything unusual. (Ever since, metal mogul, Lakshmi Mittal spent $75 million on his daughter’s wedding at Versailles a couple of years back, Swarovski heeled mother in laws have been pondering how to top him.)

I have watched, jaw-agape, as each panel of a dress is digitally printed, then hand-jewelled at a methodical pace of 10 cm every three hundred hours or so. It is indeed one of luxury’s worst kept secrets that Europe’s top couture houses farm their embroidery or jewel work out to India – only to print ‘Made in Italy’ on the label. What furtive splendour. And yet how else do you employ 1.3 billion people?

TARUN TAHILANI GOES DECON

THE CAR FROM MANISH ARORA'S NEW TV SHOW, 'THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADIES TAILOR'

Since I last covered India Fashion Week, there has been an amazing maturing of design signatures. There were a good 20 shows that interested me, but of course, some stood out. It’s little wonder the unassuming Namrata Joshipura sells well in New York’s Nolita: her muted sequin shifts effortlessly resolve the marriage of Indian opulence and contemporary Western functionality. Master of detail and astounding fabrication, Rohit Bal, took his art to its archest level yet, creating fabrics from seven metals. Molten lava on the catwalk. The geometric silhouettes glow iridescent rose: India thou dost surprise me. Dump your stereotypes at Indira Gandhi airport.

Understated genius, Pratap Singh gave us ‘Mother Theresa goes Biker’, commencing with a motorbike forged from tiny rusted pairs of scissors. The signature pin tucking is dead sexy in black leather, with vampy hoodies: There’s a ‘badass/compassion’ message in there somewhere, and the rare, electric moments of colour are orgasmic.

Tahiliani’s exploration of ‘drapery vs. structure’ finally crescendos in a collection that draws parallels between Dior’s New Look and Moghul volumes: the raw hemline has entered the realm of the ladies who lakh. The qawals sing. And the between brass towers, the flawlessy deconstructed collection -- modern anywhere – proceeds to a standing ovation. “I never understood Tarun before, “Chantal Rousseau, Vice President of Bloomingdales tells me. “Now I do. It was so Indian. And that’s what made it so interesting.”

This is hopeful. It is after all, Rousseau, who gives direction to her buyers, and Saks, Browns, Harvey Nichols -- and yes, most of the right sort of Western luxury retail people – have been keeping a beady eye on the Raj lately. Gradually, I believe, India will become a more self-asserting workplace for the beading on your Versace jacket. Zoja Mihic, who has just completed her MBA in Luxury Brands in Paris, is amazed. “The 'Made in India' label could become a force to be reckoned with,” she predicts. “What these new Indian luxury brands lack in heritage, they make up for in the allure of ancient beading and a history of opulence and craft techniques that Indian fashion ultimately 'owns'.”

Significantly, the country is forging its own fashion landscape, with its own global and local references; its own seasons (surely resort wear is next, suggests Rousseau); and its own stars. And yes -- gradually what happens in the West will become less important here. The sophistication, diversity and price points of this revolution mark a seminal turning point in post-colonial fashion. (When will we pay the same for a local purse as a Dior?)
I remember standing in a grimy yard in Mumbai once, only to see a Bentley being rolling matter-of-factly out of its rusted, shipping container garage. It is an image that stays with me: A metaphor perhaps, for a whole new orbit of luxe revealing itself from an unfathomable mass of lepers, lovers, computer programmers, aircon-wallahs and bejewelled Delhi dowagers.

Adam Levin was a guest of Wills India Fashion Week. This article appeared in the South African Sunday Times