Repeat Value

Valaya,on his part,has a ready explanation too; he points out that WIFW Autumn/Winter 2012 being a ‘ready to wear week’,he showed a prêt collection for the grand finale while Delhi Couture Week was all about couture. But he does concede that both lines had the same inspiration and several common ensembles too. “A designer works on a single line of ensembles for a particular season,for both pret and couture which best showcase the ethos of his brand. Therefore,the ensembles would majorly remain the same with slight tweaking for different shows,” he says.

Meanwhile,the organisers are hardly complaining. Sunil Sethi of Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI),which organises WIFW and the couture week in Delhi,emphasises that Valaya’s lines at WIFW A/W ‘12 and the couture week were similar,but not the same. “Manish (Arora) is the only designer at the couture week to have showcased a line comprising garments that have been seen before. His case was an exception as he hadn’t shown in India for a long time,” Sethi insists.

Then there are others,who feel that there’s nothing wrong with some amount of overlap as long as the designer is a big draw and the audience/ market for his/ her collection is new. Vijay Singh of Fashion One International — that put together AVIBFW 2012 — belongs to this category. “At our event,Valaya just took the Azrak story forward; it may not have been an entirely new collection but there were several additions. In the end,it doesn’t matter much because he was showing this line in Mumbai for the first time and the market here is different from that in Delhi,” Singh notes,adding that next year’s two city editions of the bridal week will have some designers showing the same collection in Delhi and Mumbai. “We are absolutely okay with such repetition as it will open up more avenues,” he asserts.

Designer Narendra Kumar Ahmed believes that this phenomenon of repeating outfits in a show stems from the fact that designers today take on many shows. “It’s physically impossible and financially not feasible to come up with an entirely new collection for every fashion show,especially if it’s a bridal or couture line. It takes up a lot of time,energy and manpower,” he says. Sethi,however,makes it a point to send out a word of caution against repeating outfits. “At FDCI events,designers don’t repeat their creations,simply because they can’t afford to do it — this is the main hub of their business and previously shown collections won’t cut it with the buyers,” he ends.