THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: FAshion journalist and founder of the India Fashion Summit, Vinod Nair is clear on his stance on the peculiar Indian runway trend of ‘showstoppers’. “I’ve seen this only in India. It has really got to stop,” he says, over the phone from Delhi.
From a man who has covered numerous international fashion weeks and rubbed shoulders with people like Didier Grumbach, former president of the Paris Fashion Week and Maria Sole Ferragamo (the granddaughter of Salvatore Ferragamo), this has got to be taken seriously. “I have seen many talentless, rich kids who pay celebrities to walk for them.
These are the designers that the media takes seriously, while those with real potential and no financial backing fail to make headlines,” he elaborates. This was one of the issues that led him to conceptualise the India Fashion Summit (IFS), an annual conclave to discuss various issues concerning the Indian fashion industry, along with Arun Balachandran, a management expert.
While the first summit, held in late 2016 focused on the future of Indian fashion, the 2018 edition at Kochi few weeks ago, saw names like Manish Malhotra, Peter D’Ascoli, Suket Dhir and Wendell Rodricks offer their views on sustainable fashion in the Indian context. The summit also marked the launch of the India Fashion Incubator (IFI), that will see the IFS supporting young talent.
“We’re mainly looking at creativity. But creativity is not everything. We’ll be training them in the fields of marketing and business, through industry insiders, apart from the intricacies of designing, runway shows and so on,” reveals Vinod. Myntra may have attempted a similar initiative in 2014, but Vinod believes that the IFI is different.
“Firstly, the entire process will be digitised and secondly, I’m involving international stakeholders. There will also be something we’d like to call a ‘talent week’ that will feature runway shows by the young designers, and of course, with no showstoppers whatsoever,” he signs off. The writer was invited by the
India Fashion Summit