Just a few days back I wrote about a not-so-impressive lineup of Couturiers at the forthcoming Delhi Couture Week 2011. But then that was just a small problem in Couture Week’s way.
On Wednesday (29th June 2011) FDCI got a jolt when the Title Sponsor – Pearls expressed their inability to honour their committment as the Primary Sponsor of the Delhi Couture Week 2011. The reason – there seems to be some issues with the Government that the company is facing. Now with the main sponsor backing out, things have definitely gone haywire. But the good news is that The Delhi Couture Week 2011 is ON and is a 4-Day event starting 20th July 2011 till 23rd July 2011 at The Taj Palace Hotel.
FDCI and its Marketing Agency, Commune are trying for an alternative Sponsor but worse comes to worse, FDCI will bear the expense from the Surplus generated from the previous Delhi Couture Week.
Yes the afternoon shows are most likely going to be axed. I anyway didn’t find the
need for an afternoon slot. So the Delhi Couture Week 2011 will now have just 8 Couturiers showing over 4 Nights; 2 Couturier per night. For the uninitiated, FDCI had added an afternoon slot (primarily to accomodate some very pushy designers who hold clout in the Board and with the Jury). The afternoon shows were alloted to Meera-Muzaffar Ali and Adarsh Gill, Ashima-Leena and Anju Modi and Shantanu & Nikhil Mehra. (Mandira Wirk was voted off.)
Most likely now the Delhi Couture Week will have just 8 Shows and the selected Couturiers are Rohit Bal, J J Valaya, Suneet Varma, Varun Bahl, Manav Gangwani, Guurav Gupta, Manish Malhotra and Anamika Khanna (though I am not sure of her participation).
Delhi Fashion Week is folding in on itself through sheer inbred misplaced nationalism. What other fashion week in the world only shows designers from its own country? Other fashion weeks keep fresh and competitive and alive by including designers from all over the world. Designers who have the temerity to inquire about having slots in Delhi Fashion Week are turned away as “not Indian”. How sad. And yet Indian designers show in other fashion weeks around the globe. Perhaps when the whole thing collapses they’ll smarten up and open up the fashion weeks to international designers. Then it will be a REAL fashion week and not just “Hey look at me!!!”.