India’s fashion flirts with West’s silhouette
Mayor passes taxes; dyes hair. That’s the headline that Mayor David Miller joked would be written if he had taken up an offer to dye his hair purple at the L’OrГ©al Fashion Week tent. Instead, early on Tuesday evening at the Cadbury Thins No Regrets Beauty Bar, the mayor opted for a temporary butterfly tattoo on his upper left arm.
That’s just one of the many sponsored activities, along with runway fashion shows, taking place through Friday in the 30,000-square-foot tent just outside Miller’s office. I watched this tent go up and now, walking in here, it’s magic, Miller said. There’s an energy and passion in here. We have extraordinary designers in Toronto, and like so many things, we don’t trumpet ourselves enough. Maybe Toronto can learn a lesson from India, whose fashion design industry has exploded in the last decade.
When I started nine years ago, it was like My Big Fat Indian Wedding , said designer Ranna Gill, whose mosaic print dresses with gem-studded necklines were presented by Indiva, a Bloor St. W. boutique stocking contemporary Indian design. But with the coming of fashion week in India, everything changed, she said. Older customers started trying younger silhouettes and younger customers had a fashion awakening.
A lot of people think of Indian fashion as ethnic and old, but this sensibility has changed completely, agreed designer Narendra Kumar, who showed raffia-look floral dresses and gold linens with yellow beading. Kumar is credited with helping to pioneer fashion in India, by bringing the country its first fashion magazine as the founding fashion editor of Elle India in 1996.