Mass Appeal

We may still not be purchasing designer-wear or know our Tahilianis from our Bals, but we sure will be sporting clothes/ hair/bags/sunglasses that are the order of the day, even if they have been bought from the streets.

8220;Looking good is a universal concept now,8221; says cosmetic giant Lakme8217;s business head, Anil Chopra. 8220;Earlier, cosmetics were only used and sold as occasion wear, now everyone wants to be well turned out every day,8221; he adds. The mood is captured in Lakme8217;s catch-phrases, such as 8216;Who8217;s watching your lips today?8217;

Terms such as 8216;smart casual8217;, 8216;Friday dressing8217; and 8216;lounge wear8217; have jettisoned 8216;formal8217; and 8216;Indian8217; out of our vocabulary. And the common man8217;s perception of dressing has moved from safe to stylish. 8220;Consumers are looking for something that8217;s very different from what they8217;ve been used to,8221; says Dhiren Shah, proprietor of Mumbai8217;s retail chain, Sheetal. 8220;The principal aim for a store now is to educate the customer on fashion8217;s new lingo.8221;

Agrees Rakesh Biyani, director of Pantaloon, which has 14 stores across India: 8220;For our Crush ad campaign, we had to educate consumers first. Only when they know that the crumpled unironed look is in, will they go for it.8221; Pantaloon, which believes in 8220;selling fashion at affordable prices8221;, is planning five more outlets this year in Gurgaon Delhi, Nagpur, Bangalore, Baroda and Vashi in Navi Mumbai. Turnover is expected to leapfrog to Rs 275 crore, from Rs 192 crore a year ago.

The Indian middle-class8217; obsession with fashion is also evident when Lifestyle, a large Dubai-based department store chain, opened its doors in the far-flung suburb of Mulund in March, with the promise of two more in Lower Parel and Malad by the end of the year. 8220;Lifestyle is catering to the 8216;aspirational middle-class8217; segment,8221; says Kumar Sitaraman, managing director.

More and more young people are also choosing fashion as a profession, and schools teaching fashion design as a career are mushrooming across the country. 8220;Most of these are barely schools, they8217;re shops that sell fashion education,8221; guffaws Harmeet Bajaj, associate professor of fashion communication at Delhi8217;s National Institute of Fashion Technology NIFT, the first such school to open in the country 1989. The Pearl Academy was second, but only in 1993. 8220;However, in the last five years, almost 50 schools have opened,8221; adds Bajaj. And these are just the accredited ones, there are scores which aren8217;t accounted for. 8220;The media has also glamourised the profession making Page Three celebs out of designers.8221;

With the ever-increasing column space and television airtime devoted to fashion, trends have now percolated down to all levels. Fashion TV and the newer Trendz on Zee are accessed at the push of a button, but even 8216;serious8217; news channels have introduced 8216;fashion and lifestyle8217; shows like NDTV8217;s Night Out to bring in those desperately needed TRPs. And one can8217;t keep crediting Ekta Kapoor8217;s saas-bahus remember Parvati bhabhi8217;s diamond-studded bindi for glamourising the country. Even newsreaders are trained to look like wannabe models with impeccable hair, pouty lipstick and structured jackets.

White linen kurtas with suede strings or embroidery, peasant tops, georgette kurtas and leheriya skirts can be seen in stores such as Ensemble and Ogaan, as well as the streets of Mumbai Fashion Street, Hill Road, Linking Road, Delhi Janpath, Sarojini Market, GK 2 and Pune MG Road and Fashion Street at almost the same time!

8220;Fashion is no longer confined to high-fashion stores,8221; says Shagun Khanna, representative of Delhi8217;s swishy Ogaan store. 8220;Whenever we get new stock, we realise that local markets like Sarojini Nagar and Janpath catch up in just a couple of days,8221; she adds.

If the greatest touchstone of any economy-watching is the middle-class, then the Indian middle-class seems geared for his or her high heels as well. The large mass of the middle-income group8212;that has always played safe where dressing is concerned8212;is getting more 8216;with it8217; than ever before.

If western attire, often the easiest barometer of stylish-ness, was a pair of jeans, it has now extended itself to a pair of blue, black, embellished, low-waist and cowboy-cut8212;we must have them all.

Ragini Bansal8217;s favourite day of the week is when she can take time off from her domesticities to scour Delhi8217;s Sarojini Nagar. 8220;I can8217;t afford fancy fashion stores, but I still manage to get clothes in tandem with current fashion trends for half the price here,8221; she gloats, picking up an assymetrical skirt often seen on runways.

Bansal is not the only one to have fashion rank high on her priority list, even though she doesn8217;t fit into the swish set. With mall culture taking over the country at break-neck speed, one thing is certain8212;fashion is in high demand. In fact, retail in India is now a Rs 67,000 crore industry, with designers constituting a Rs 200 crore market that grows by 20 per cent every year, according to a Fashion Design Council of India FDCI survey.

Tanaz Kothari, head merchandiser at Pune8217;s The Bombay Store says Puneiites are almost as conscious about their style and look as Mumbaiites are. 8220;Just go to the races and you8217;ll know what I mean,8221; she says.

Pantaloon8217;s Biyani believes that two things are at work. 8220;It8217;s not just the middle-class that8217;s waking up to fashion, the designers are also waking up to the middle-class,8221; he explains. This also prompted a textile giant like Raymond, with a heritage of 76 years, to get fashion-wise with Be:, their retail outlet that sells affordable designer clothes between Rs 600 and Rs 6,000. 8220;We8217;re taking a number of innovative steps to make a change,8221; says director Gautam Singhania. Seven stand-alone stores in one year, with an annual turnover of Rs 6 crore, is proof of their success.

Stores such as Wills Sport, Pyramid, Shopper8217;s Stop, Westside and Pantaloon have taken fashion to the masses, not just with a chic in-house design team, but also by offering mass production access to reputable fashion designers.

The pioneers of incorporating high-end designers to mass produce cheaper clothes probably came from Mumbai8217;s Sheetal. Proprietor Shah took leading designers Hemant Trevedi and Manish Malhotra and more recently Delhi8217;s Aki Narula on a salaried contract basis, offering them their extensive infrastructure to exploit and bring true-blue trends to their clientele. The result: for the store, the clientele becomes more aware and increases tremendously and for the designer, his brand name has a more secure foothold in an industry where even a toehold would have otherwise cost him an arm and a leg!

Like designer Priyadarshini Rao, who retails from over 10 outlets, says, 8220;My sales have doubled.8221;

8220;Customers were calling out for a change,8221; says Shah, on why he wanted to open a design outlet Sheetal Design Studio for an already successful retail chain. 8220;Whatever strata of society one comes from, everyone dreams of looking good and feeling divine, that too, at an affordable price,8221; he adds. Shah8217;s SDS is now in its fourth year, and the sales, he says, are 8220;tremendous8221;.

Malls can be singularly credited with changing the way

India dresses. For example, the average shopper does not have to be suitably fashion-wise to know what8217;s trendy or not. The malls are already equipped with standardised trendy clothes that one can just pick up from the

innumerable racks.

Catalogues are also freely available, showing off the latest colours, styles and clothes. The average buyer doesn8217;t have to rely on expensive fashion magazines or dream of gate-crashing designer shows, if he can lay his hands on the malls8217; catalogues. Many stores, such as Westside, bring out regular editions of fashion newspapers with stylised photo-shoots, articles on trends and society gupshup.

Another first in India8212;obsessing with the seasons. A year ago, sales were planned around festivals such as Gudi Padwa or Diwali, now even small stores cash in on the Spring-Summer and the Fall-Winter buzz. 8220;I don8217;t know what it means in Mumbai, since we are hot and humid throughout the year,8221; says Kamal Pandya, a middle-aged, middle-income regular at Mumbai8217;s Big Bazaar, 8220;but I think they mean that the

garments will be completely

different from each other,8221; he concludes.

So typically, for a Spring-Summer line, the malls stress on bright colours and pastels pinks, oranges, blues and

yellows in cool 8216;breathable8217; fabric such as linen, cotton and cheese-cloth; while Fall-Winter will have them stocking darker, sober colours in blends and

synthetics.

Ensemble8217;s proprietor Tina Tahiliani-Parikh sees the bigger picture. 8220;In the last two years, fashion has been corporatised, and standardisation is now the norm. But where is the individuality in this?8221; she asks. 8220;I think India is becoming a lowest common denominator culture, like the USA.8221; But India8217;s 300-million- strong middle-class isn8217;t complaining. They8217;d rather be donning the bush-shirts over their khakis instead.

With inputs from Shobita Dhar in New Delhi and Uma Karve in Pune