Chandani Chownk Twist

“Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.” said Bill Cunningham.
In today’s modern era where depression rate is rising and self esteem of people falling down, being well dressed as per the current fashion trends brings a bucket full of confidence in oneself. Getting out of bed, is one hell of a difficult task for anybody. Everybody’s super lazy to step out of the house, but for some people there is a reason. A reason named fashion. There are many people who wake up , inspight of different reasons, just for fashion. They breathe, they eat fashion. Fashion keeps one going. It’s not just a saying. I believe it to be true. Fashion is that one thing that gives you confidence, self esteem, attitude and drama. Fashion is beloved by all, be it rich or poor, young or old.

Fashion is a growing industry in India. It has always grown along side with the trends. With India being the developing country it is, it still hits all new trends and styles for icons all across the globe. Indian fashion is at infancy at the moment and has the potential to rise above all. Fashion in India goes a long way back when there were kings and queens. India has a history of rich heritage and textiles where each region has it’s own native language, native dresses and traditions. In India, people dress according to their status in the society in terms of wealth, religious culture etc. Fashion designers such as Ritu Kumar, Ritu Beri, Rina Dhaka, Rohit Bal, Muzaffar Ali, Satya Paul, Abraham and Thakore, Tarun Tahiliani, JJ Valaya and Manish Malhotra are some of the well known fashion designers in India.

In Rajasthan and Gujarat men wrap a length of cloth in the form of a dhoti around their legs and a shirt-like cloth called kurta. Colorful turbans complete the picture of the Indian people. In urban India, the women commonly wear salwar kameez and the churidar kameez, is worn by women who go to work and the saree is worn on formal occasions. Men wear kurtas and pajamas, or a sherwani for formal wear. Western wear such as shirts and trousers are commonly worn by men across India.T shirts, jeans, capris are the kind of casual clothing worn by the young, who are the trendsetters of fashion in India. India can now boast about dozens of fashion designers, who can match any European fashion designer in their concepts, styles and designs.

A report on Indian Fashion Industry recently stated that the industrycan increase its net worth of Rs 200 crore to Rs 1,000 crore in the next five to ten years. Currently, the worldwide market for designer wear is amounted at $35 billion, with a 9% growth rate, with the Indian fashion industry creating hardly 0.2% of the international industry's net worth.

The Indian fashion industry is a big exporter of textiles and ornaments for the global fashion industry. India's strengths are due to its tradition, but even its raw materials. India is the third largest producer of cotton, the second largest producer of silk and the fifth largest producer of man-made fibers materials all around the world. The media has also played an important role in the fashion boom by providing a good coverage to the fashion world and even several magazines are devoted only to the fashion scenario of India and the world like Vogue, Cosmopolitan. This industry is also generating a lot of business. This industry is also offering many job opportunities to many young people of the nation and inspiring them to bring creativity to action on cloth material.

With no moral ethics or proper system in place, the Indian fashion industry is built own exploitation of the labour, college students and young adults who don’t hold fancy degrees. This causes the team to be overworked, underpaid and hence not motivated. With No new ideas, and plagiarism being, common practice, it’s easy to find the same design in 10 different stores.

This demotivates buyers from shopping from many different labels as it gives them the freedom from buying from a cheaper source, like ShahpurJat or Chandni Chowk where many sellers are standing and shouting “Sabyasaachi! Sabyasaachi! Sabyasaachi!” Or “Tarun Tahiliani !”

This leaves the designers in a tough place, where the buyers are demanding at a low cost and all the designs they have worked on are of very little value to the consumer. Consumers find spending money on a small designer with not a big name not worth putting money towards as it won’t value them much, literally and societally. India lacks invention, inventing new designs to the world. People in India take bits and pieces of somebody else’s work and form a new thing calling it a trend.

The target audience for the Indian designers are the local Indian women, that makes the industry local. There’s least amount of globalisation there.

Thus, globalization has completely changed the face of our Indian fashion industry.