Guess it is time to get the news out!
The person replacing Anjana Sharma (who was fired recently) at IMG Reliance comes in from Wills Lifestyle – the Apparel business division of ITC. He was with Wills Lifestyle since its inception and was part of the core team from Wills Lifestyle at the bi-annual Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW).
Seem IMG Reliance wants expertise from FDCI organised India Fashion Week to set the Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) in order. Well time only will tell how the new guy fares!
Anjana Sharma joined IMG Reliance as Director Fashion in January 2011 and was at the helm of affairs of Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) that is co-organised by IMG Reliance and Lakme. But Anjana’s stint was cut-short after been with IMG Reliance only for 19 Months.
IMG Reliance has asked Anjana Sharma to put in her papers and the person replacing her is from Delhi and is from the fashion industry. The disastrous Winter/Festive 2012 Edition of Lakme Fashion Week was probably the nail in the coffin for Anjana Sharma. Lacklustre list of participating designers, total vaccum of business at the fashion week and virtual boycott of LFW by the luminous Board ere signs loud enough hinting at the deteriorating levels of Lakme Fashion Week. The stormy session post the LFW where the Board was volatile and upset at way things were going on at Lakme Fashion Week was widely reported in the Press.
Delhi is undoubtedly the Fashion Capital of India and hope the Delhi person replacing Anjana Sharma as Director Fashion at IMG Reliance will resurrect the Lakme Fashion Week. Meanwhile don’t know if Anjana Sharma will try her luck with AMR Group’s dubious Indian Fashion Company (IFC), which tom-tommed about floating a Young Designers’ Forum (YDF) that Sharma strongly advocated for.
The number of Fashion Weeks and Fashion Bodies India have is greater than the sum total of Fashion Weeks held in London, Milan, New York and Paris. Besides the primary two – the India Fashion Week organised by Fashion Designers Council of India (FDCI) and Lakme Fashion Week organised by Reliance-IMG the other Fashion Weeks are nothing but trash. A ‘Fashion Week’ is B2B Model where fashion designers showcase their collections to Buyers and Media. The trashy ones are just ‘tamasha’ where there is absolutely no business.
Now a Uttar Pradesh based Real-Estate Group – AMR has ambitiously got on to the bandwagon of Fashion. The promoters of this Company have absolutely no experience of fashion business yet they have forged a body called India Fashion Council. Most amazingly India Fashion Council is a ‘Proprietorship‘ firm. Anybody who knows a bit about ‘Councils’ and their memorandum should know that ‘Council’ is a non-profit body and can never be floated by a ‘Proprietor’. The fraudulent ways of AMR’s IFC is further exposed by their ‘FALSE’ claim of being associated with a Leading English Newspaper of India. The objective definitely has nothing to do for the growth of Indian Fashion and fashion Designers but to garner publicity for their real-estate brand. The group has roped in some mediocre event company and a former FDCI executive along with few senior fashion journalists to put together a fashion week.
The way AMR went about the whole deal was rather unscrupulous. First they approached FDCI showing interest in sponsoring a fashion week. Later they announced forming a fashion council. Anyways there are dime-a-dozen designers who they can lure in by paying money to do a show but that’s about it. Many ambitious people and groups have attempted to form councils and fashion weeks but all have burnt their fingers.
It is high-time our designers shun these fly-by-night operators and not let them dilute the concept of ‘fashion week’ for their personal gains.
Lakme Fashion Week was anyway going downhill for quiet sometime now as it had become nothing but a Bollywood Tamasha. But now that Old Guards have given way to the new team, the exodus of designers loyal to Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) to Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW) was expected. After the face of LFW – Anil Chopra quit Lakme, the IMG Reliance team hasn’t been able to muster up a good line-up of designers. If you go through the list of participating designers in LFW, I am sure you will see a whole bunch of new names. Oh yes, participation of New York based designer of Indian origin – Bibhu Mohapatra is probably the highlight of the Lakme Fashion Week Summer Resort 2012.
The WIFW Fall-Winter 2012 schedule disappointed me when I saw many quality Pret Wear designers absent. The absence of Rajesh Pratap Singh, Ashish Soni, Rohit Gandhi + Rahul Khanna, Namrata Joshipura, Varun Bahl, Ranna Gill, Nandita Basu, Varun Sardana and Prashant Verma is going to rob the charm of WIFW quiet a bit. I don’t know if the addition of LFW loyalists like Nachiket Barve, Kallol Dutta, Dev r Nil and Abdul Haldar in WIFW schedule will compensate that loss. The 12-Designer Show to support the cause against Women Trafficking at WIFW holds promise though.
When you ask the designers who are skipping the Fall-Winter 2012 edition of WIFW they give you politically correct answers but that’s definitely not the fact. Off-the-Record comments fly off like – “The line-up looks like Bridal Fashion Week”, or some hint at groupism. When will Indian Fashion get over trivial politics???
When UTV Stars announced their soon-to-be-aired show – Keeping Up With The Khan Sisters based on the reality TV Show Keeping Up With The Kardashians, everybody started guessing which Khan Sisters are these. Most though its gonna be Malaika Arora Khan and Amrita Arora because when it comes to the Butt department, Malaika Arora Khan probably comes closest to the Asstastic Hollywood Celebrity, Kim Kardashian. Though there were others guess-works like Salman Khan’s sisters and many more but nobody even made a wild guess that it would be Gauhar Khan and her TV Star sister Nigar Khan. Don’t confuse this Nigar Khan with the Norwegian Nigar Khan who flashes her boobs at the slightest opportunity. UTV Stars copied the Reality TV series but I think it is going to be a very poor copy of a Trashy TV Show.
Kim Kardashian’s claim to fame is her famous Ass and her leaked 39 minute Sex Video Tape with Hip-Hop Star, Ray J. Kim Kardashian’s booty was so much in the news that to prove that she hasn’t got silicon implants in her butt, Kim went through a Body-Scanner to show all that her Ass is Au Naurale! Malaika Arora Khan, the Bootilicious Bollywood babe can’t take that risk though.
The closest one has got to some Butt(y) news on Gauhar Khan was when her body-hugging skirt in Lakme Fashion Week gave away at the seams and one got a peek at her butt.