The Pret Picture

Others couturiers like JJ Valaya,Anamika Khanna,Rohit Bal and Sabyasachi Mukherjee — to name a few — have already embarked on a brand strategy that factor in pret and diffusion offerings from them,not just for their own fashion labels but for other companies where they work as consultants. Bal recently created an affordable line for multi-designer label Karmik. Another designer duo,Shantanu and Nikhil,who started out with focus on their couture line for their Mumbai store shifted priorities recently to their bridge brand S&N Drape,with prices starting at Rs 12,500.

“We wanted to reach out to the wider segment of Mumbai’s young and fashion conscious party-goers,so we decided to diversify and offer style with affordability,” says Shantanu Mehra.

Valaya,who showed a pret range as part of the Azrak collection for his Autumn/ Winter ’12 Finale at the Wills India Fashion Week (WIFW),looks at pret as a ‘natural process of evolution’. “Couture will always remain exclusive and inspirational,but if a fashion brand intends to create a larger footprint,the answer is ready-to-wear,” he says,adding that his expansion plans involves pret in a big way.

According to Sabyasachi Mukherjee,who has also created numerous pret lines,the pret movement can be traced to the way money has changed hands in recent times. “What is true luxury is changing,especially for India’s upper middle class,where there’s room for price correction,” says Mukherjee,who plans to launch a new pret line on a bigger scale within a year.

Economic volatility hasn’t reduced the keenness on fashion but it has shifted the onus from extremely expensive clothes to trendy ones. Pret fits that bill. Besides,spending on fashionable clothes is no longer viewed as an extravagance. “Earlier,places like Ludhiana,Chandigarh,Hyderabad,Lucknow,Indore and Jaipur were considered to be sleepy towns,but that’s not the case anymore. There’s new money in these cities and people know fashion designers thanks to extensive media coverage of fashion events. So,a pret line created by a well known couturier would do good business in such cities,” explains Pradeep Hirani of the fashion house Kimaya,that in the process of setting up stores for their pret label Karmik (with prices starting as low as Rs 5,000) in these cities.