Retail fashion seeks a partner in heritage and history

Fashion makes us other people; fashion retail turns old spaces into someone new. Pockets of cities have rejuvenated and gentrified by waves of fashion retail. Over the past three years, Kala Ghoda has shed its stodgy blue-collar office wear to open the store windows to Masaba's vociferous prints, Nicobar's Indo-urban daily wear, Manish Arora's unmissable sartorial screams and Gaurav Gupta's molten gold sari-lehenga fantasies (replacing Sabysachi Mukherjee's subversive nostalgia).

Once, the area was allegedly quasi rent controlled due to ancient rent agreements, but after it's fashion make-over, the rents are said to have sky-rocketed. According to one press report, designer Gaurav Gupta rents the ground floor property opposite the Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue for Rs five lakh a month.

The Fort area is expected to undergo a similar transformation after its recent fashion transfusion via Zara. The Spanish high street brand has spread itself languidly over 50,000 sq ft and five floors behind the Flora Fountain. The rent at Ismail building? An eye-watering Rs 2.5 crore a month. And with Zara here, can H&M be far behind?

The bylanes branching out from Colaba Causeway have been fashion victims for long, with multi-designer and lifestyle stores such Ogaan, Good Earth, (the now transplanted) Bombay Electric, The Courtyard, Bungalow 8 and designers Payal Khandwala and Arjun Khanna setting up a presence there.

So how does a fashion retail change a neighbourhood? And is the relationship symbiotic or parasitic? Depends on whom you ask.

Artful symbiosis

A long time ago, designers opened stores solely in the cooled halls of five hotels, believing both – that the brands needed to nestle in rarefied air and that this was where their clientele would, by happenstance, buy a frock for a bejewelled evening.

When the fashion became an organised industry in the 1990s, designers started seeking neighbourhoods and structures that echoed brand's aesthetics. Ensemble started off, and remains at, Lion's Gate in Colaba.

Artist-turned- designer Payal Khandwala's first stand alone store came up at Apollo Bunder Road on the far side of Colaba in 2014. The area was in the middle of its second wave of fashion gentrification.

In 2008, Maithili Ahluwalia's Bungalow 8 had taken over three floors in the same Grants Building as Wankhede Stadium (and their permanent store in it) underwent renovation.

The Courtyard at Apollo Bunder housing Abraham & Thakore and Rajesh Pratap Singh – was hanging by it last thread. Khandwala took over the bottom space Bungalow 8 used.

"We liked that it had a patina to it. The streets below are Little Arabia," says Ahluwalia, referring to the ittar and hijabi fashion for Arab tourists. "It looked like a place about to implode or explode," she adds. They restored the old staircase, polished the old electrical switchbox so that it shone as much as any piece of art, and hoped to co-exist with the old bread shop and the Chinese family-run beauty parlour below.

"Colaba itself has a lovely character," says Khandwala. "The arched windows and the exposed rafters on the ceiling were loveable characteristics of the 150-year- old building." When time came for her to open another store in the western suburbs, she couldn't find anything at the arterial Linking Road, Turner Road or Juhu Tara Link Road. "They were frightfully expensive and too shop-like," she says.

She finally found a niche in Chimbai village, wedged between two certainties of that fishing village's life – Dr Hingorani and Pinky Wine Shop. She is the only design presence there, renting space in the Chimbaikar bungalow.

Given the geography of the place, it's unlikely to develop into a fashion hub, and joining the flowing current of local life is the direction Khandwala wanted to swim in.

Ahluwalia feels gentrification is a double-edge word, causing saturation and heightened rents, and finally, desertion. "Retailers forget there is something beautiful about grit and glamour. You have to be part of the larger landscape. When too many designers crowd a place, it loses its diversity, and the neighbourhood becomes a pastiche in itself. We were renting space in Colaba at Rs 275 per square foot," she says, "Then in 2008, the market crashed. Now, they can't command Rs 125 per sq feet."

The rent agreement to Bungalow 8's permanent residence at Wankhede stadium dates to 1968, and ensures that no other design space will come up in the area.

When rents rise, independent designers are forced out and the only takers are international chains with deep pockets. Like at Kala Ghoda. Chetna and the Golden Thimble have been drowned by merry restaurant chains like the Irish House. When the first Cafe Coffee Day unfurls it's patio umbrella, know that the end is near.