IS there a designer-led revolution going on in India? Has that design revolution zipped into the stratosphere, changing the manner in which people shop, giving a refreshing face to merchandising, window display, e-shopping, store promotions, touch-and-feel events, buyers bazaar’s, big ticket sales – a retail earthquake, in other words? Has that particular language of design trickled down into the daily lingua franca of a country that, experts tell us, is on the cusp of Great Consumption? Have designers – those great mavens of style – taken it a step further into big retail, massive turnovers, an IPO maybe?

Will there be a time when a confident consumer might be able to walk into a mall, say, and pick a shirt, a tie, a kurta, a suit or an elegant pair of shoes by an Indian designer or indeed a clutch of them without needing to pop into Canali or Hugo Boss or Anderson & Sheppard or indeed Zara, Top Shop or one of the diffusion designer lines? Why is it so easy to make a choice in this western format – is it the design, the thought to seasonal style changes, the heritage, the colours, that intrinsic understanding of What a Consumer Really Wants – that holds this allure for consumers? Is the same attention to detail just not woven, no pun, into the sensibility of Indian designers? Or then, oh well, is it just Indian design, stuck, as it were, in a terrible cliché of embroidery, unwearable clothes, billowing volumes (not of sales but of fabric) and marked by a numbing sense of being out-of-touch?

There’s more – why is it more exciting, if one has the time, to choose from fantastic cottons, silk and such, sit with a tailor or give him something to copy and in little time, own an inspired piece of clothing? Why do ready-to-wear lines by Indian designers look ticky-tacky – those boxy shirts with frayed threads, the bleeding colours, the weak stabs at individuality that look comical at best? Knock me with a feather, but I think the answer to all of the above is in the negative. From a consumer’s point of view, Indian design has a long way to go.

As a consumer, and as someone who works in corporate India for the most time, I am looking for access to clothes, shoes and accessories that are functional, elegant, understated, with a dash of style perhaps, but not too much. I’m looking for design that is clean and functional and that has a thought process, a DNA. I don’t want to be part of the crowd but it’s good to have a defining factor, a whiff (for want of a better word), a something.

I need well-lit stores with garments clearly on view. Shop assistants need to be efficient, available when needed and knowledgeable about design, cut, shape and size. I should be able to rifle through the racks quickly, try on garments in clean, unstuffy changing rooms minus thumping techno music on the speakers. I should be able to, ideally, choose shirts, shoes, a suit, ties, links, a sweater and socks in a relatively short period of time since I find shopping a chore that needs to be completed quickly.

 

These shopping expeditions amount to arming the arsenal of business – they are, to use a phrase, business tools. Of course, the business of arming oneself also means pretty good revenue lines for retailers. So, why is it that this efficiency I have mentioned above can only be achieved in single-brand stores owned by a conglomerate that has the ability to quickly change colours, shape and designs every season, and really understand what a buyer wants? Why is there not an Indian designer up there who can cater to the business shopper?

The Italian brand Boggi, to cite an example (and now open in Delhi), is the perfect one-stop shop for the business clothing shopper. The mid-price store has unobtrusive staff guide you to what they think you might like, they place ‘Look Books’ for you to go through, place shirts, ties, trousers neatly to create a moment.

Try getting all this in an Indian designer store; Indian designers seem to suffer from a singular lack of confidence when it comes to big-ticket retail. They are content selling from blowsy, over-the-top boutiques with cutesy, lazy references to Indian culture – its kitsch taken to a frightening pitch. And above all it is lazy and indifferent to the consumer. The sensibility is inward looking based on a few fawning items in the press. More on that later. But, before I move on, I just want to delve into the minds of the maestro’s.

Below are clips from a website that tell us where their ‘sensibilities’ (that word!) come from. Take a look:

‘The fabrics used are suiting fabrics with heady mixes of heavy satins and knits. The line opens new doors as youth moves to sophistication.’ Youth moving to sophistication. Well, thank heaven for that.

‘This collection draws its inspiration from the culture of turkey.’ Not geese fortunately.

‘The brand speaks of sheer Elegance and Panache which is woven with Global Timelessness and Great Craftsmanship’ (cap’s writers own).

‘A tapestry of varied cultural references infused with urbane existence plays a key role in this collection with which they have combined natural affinity to line and shape and a fascination for postmodern architecture.’ Wonder what kind of shirt that would make?

‘Hers is a presence of rare eminence and a design sense of luxe richness. A Design pioneer, Global citizen and a success story fables are made of…’ Enough said.

 

But seriously, this is the sort of stuff that is also snapped up by the media. And there lies another rub; the alleged fashion press. Buoyed and bouncy from the high of glamour drip-fed by designers, this is the provenance of possibly India’s most ill-informed journalists. Instead of focusing on what is good for the consumer, we have a rash of ‘writers’ banging out reams of copy on fashion shows, fashion parties, more fashion shows, sponsored bashes, staged events and much more. Part of this is to be expected; as India’s economy grows, businesses and brands will jostle for space to grab attention. In the ensuing melee, anything goes. But does it have to be so crass, so commercial, so brazenly in the face?

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a young cub reporter standing at the bottom of the ladder; the problem is when that same reporter appears to cover a name or a show without any reading or background checks whatsoever. And when the same cub reporter has had absolutely no guidance from a senior, more experienced editor, you have on your hand two things that illustrate the typical fashion/ lifestyle reporter – an illiterate and a monster.

Typically, and I am trying hard not to draw a caricature, this will be a twenty something who has little control on the ego, throwing up copy with no cultural or literate or business references. Pampered and feted by minders from designer brands, this monster usually has a burnout rate of about two years, after which sizzled from all that vacuous partying, those campy quotes, the fakeness of it all, the person in question just disappears from the scene. No one misses him or her.

There’s a more worrying aspect to this – journalists covering the scene are reflecting a bald fact – no one reads these days. Pimped and pumped out by addictive, sugary, easy-to-digest news bits snapped up from social networking sites and internet gossip, writers would much rather resort to picking up references from there rather than from literature. There’s an appalling, and as I said worrying, disinterest in things around us, what makes things tick, why people say what they do, in art, literature, politics, philosophy and more. Questioning went out of the window. Inspired debate died and its wake is being celebrated at a fashion show next to you.

There’s an interesting parable you can draw here though; take an investment banker or indeed any of those big-shouldered, power dressed movers in finance, all trussed up from an Ivy League business school and making enough money to buy ‘art’. The art is not being bought for joy, or the fact that it can move one. It is not being bought because the buyer is inspired. It is being bought for investment and it is being bought on advise – the thinking, in other words, is being done by someone else. This is true for the media frenzy around fashion as well – the advise on what works, the ‘inspiration’ behind collections, on colours – everything is now out-sourced, even the thinking process. The result? You are for force-fed to believe.

 

Here’s an example; in a horrific, hugely successful, media-led coup, designer brands from abroad seized upon the party gown. All the big named plunged in – this was a no advertising, all editorial campaign. In that, it was as insidious and creeping as the Great Wine Sell in the ’90s, but that’s another story. In the Gown Invasion, reams of gushing copy poured forth on the lushness, elegance, exquisiteness of chiffon, georgette, satin and such gowns by all the big name western brands. In a trice, parties from Delhi to Mumbai to Goa, (yes, gowns in that former Boho paradise!) had socialites dripping in gowns. There was a gown for every moment – the red carpet, the blue carpet, the burnt sienna carpet. Bollywood, most helpfully, chipped in. Stellar gowns were made available to stars for every event they hoped to attend. Soon, Indian designers had to follow suit.

Soon apparitions in polka dots, ruched, stretched, in bias cuts, in cream, magenta and yellow started streaming out from sweatshops in lal dora factories in dusty bylanes of Delhi. Millions were, and are being made. It was bye-bye sari (without by leave of a kiss) and hello gowns. Now, think if the same diligence had been applied to promoting an Indian design element, a push, say, to the kurta or to Chanderi fabric or to Sambhalpur saris. Not to lecture, but there is something deeply gratifying about a weaver making a pile rather than a fat cat gown churner.

 

Let’s also not forget that the pernicious practice of paid editorials actually all began on the fashion/lifestyle pages. It began with an awful premise on the part of management; journalists are being given freebies, these freebies add up to loads of money, therefore we should charge for the articles. This places a dreadful onus on the journalists an organization employs, that is, the argument might go, ‘Our writers accept expensive freebies, hence they will right "nice" things, which means they are easily corruptible.’

To put an end to this ‘corruption’ and to give everyone fragrant, fawning copy, we will employ sheep and make a lot of money. The same practice has bubbled, like an evil brew, and made its way as another avatar – that of paid political reportage. If you thought paid lifestyle news was bad, this is positively the pits. It goes against the very grain of democracy. And it all began with a gown.

It would frankly be a bit unfair not to commend the contribution the design community has made to improving design awareness and its ripple effect – the design schools, the tremendous sales for some of the designers, the employment they provide, the growth in an entirely new crop of jobs far removed from the engineers and doctors of yore – the merchandisers, the stylists, the window dressers, the make-up artists and such. But that is a given for any manufacturing process.

 

The benefits that accrue to a larger population are massive. If indeed, the Indian design community could step out of its own small world and take a world view, a larger vision, the benefits for it and the community at large are huge. Indian designers complain that they do not have access to capital to allow them to ramp up to big ticket retail. They say that an Indian design by default is handmade, embellished and therefore very special – not for everyone quite clearly. This is an argument no entrepreneur can buy; Ralph Lauren was a purveyor of ties. He now churns out a vision that is pure buyable fantasy.

We are yet to see that break-out Indian designer. Others have said that they do not want to be in a market where their name is on shirts that peddle for a few thousand rupees in a prêt line – this is just laziness bordering on arrogance coming from zero vision. In the end, it is Indian design that will suffer. It will remain small change. And it will be consumers like me wondering at the wonder of well-organized retail outfits that allow me to make a quality purchase under, as I mentioned above, well lit, efficiently organized, all under-one-roof stores. For my boxy shirt, I’ll pop into see an Indian designer.