The Fashion and Design Promotion Council (FDPC), a three-month-old government body with sweeping powers, has gone back on its promise of dividing its favours between Delhi and Mumbai. Delhi is slowly being turned into the nation’s first fashion hub. And Mumbai is left with crumbs from this pie.
Look at what Delhi gets: a fashion complex spread over ten acres at Maidan Garhi in which will come up boutiques, offices, a textile museum and high-tech design equipment meant to manufacture fabrics. There’s also talk, by FDPC bossman Vijay K Singh, that the two private Delhi-based fashion bodies — Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) and Fashion Foundation of India (FFI) which organise Wills India Fashion Week and Delhi Fashion Week respectively — will come together under the FDPC umbrella. And, this will result in a single fashion week for the Spring/Summer’10 season in September’09.
These were the similar promises made to Mumbai, which ranks several notches higher than Delhi in the global fashion scene. Local designers and store owners are upset, naturally. However, Vijay K Singh promised, “We will start the Mumbai chapter of FDPC in May. A national trade fair calendar will be released in which designers from Mumbai, too, can participate. Plus, FDPC will fund designers invited to the Fashion Weeks in Milan, Paris and New York.”
He noted that the recent Lakme Fashion Week provided a great platform for designers even though this did not translate into encouraging business. “The FDPC will work towards this and will initiate talks with the LFW team soon,” he added.
Designer Raghavendra Rathore, who is Vice-President of FDPC, further assured Mumbai by saying, “There has been no oversight. The local government in Mumbai will soon start work with FDPC. Ideally, there should not be any replication of facilities in Delhi and Mumbai. So, the success of the hi-tech fashion hub in Delhi will decide what Mumbai’s strengths ought to be.” Significantly, Anil Chopra, LFW advisor, chose not to react to this assurance.
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