Are you a camera/automobile/tech company whose target audience is men? Do you have some extra cash lying around that you would want to use for publicity?
Sources claim that the FDCI has been struggling for over two years to find sponsors for a male-oriented show
Are you a camera/automobile/tech company whose target audience is men? Do you have some extra cash lying around that you would want to use for publicity? Well, then you may just be what the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) is looking for to sponsor a menswear fashion week.
At the ongoing Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW) in Delhi, FDCI director general Rathi Vinay Jha proclaimed that the FDCI is gearing up for a separate week devoted to men’s fashion. “Menswear is the largest growing market and definitely a niche area,” Jha said. The move by the council is only a signal of the times — this season even the big ticket designers like Tarun Tahiliani are shifting focus to men.
However, even as designers (most of them here are men!) renew their pledge to dress up their own kind, the menswear fashion week that Jha is talking about has been hanging over fire for the last two years because the council has failed to find any sponsors for the event. Its executive director Sumeet Nair is still optimistic though. “I assure you we’ll do the menswear week by 2009,” he says.
But there’s, of course, competition involved. Bangalore-based choreographer Prasad Bidappa already runs a menswear fashion week there and had even offered to tie up with the fashion council. Unfortunately, sources say the FDCI doesn’t want to partner the event — first because the title sponsor is a liquor brand and second, the week is a free event, something that hardly fits into the more brown-nosed image of WIFW. So if they do partner together, a lot of systemic changes will have to be made, something that most designers feel is not worth the trouble.
However, even as the fashion world begins to focus on menswear, the quality of male models at WIFW has been substandard. First, in stark contrast to the 47-odd female models on the FDCI list, the number of male models stands at a paltry six, out of which Inder Bajwa is the only one who appears to be of any significance. Thus, designers like Hemant Lecoanet were forced to use foreign models like Ignatious Camillo.
Photographer Hemant Khandilwal, who was on the jury to chose the models says, “No auditions happened for the male models. Designers don’t want them, so we don’t have them. Plus, there are no big ‘male’ names in the modelling circuit these days.” Hopefully now, as the focus of fashion shifts, it may just be the return of the breed long considered dead and buried — the great Indian male model!
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