Thursday, February 5, 2009

Emperor's New Clothes

Recipe to run a fashion clothing store in Mumbai ... pick a reasonably prominent location , call it whatever you want ( name is irrelevant ) , get a good PR agency who ensures your name is in newspapers every few days and that you get invited to page 3 events , befriend few celebrities. Do this for a while and then the 'Emperor's New Clothes ' phenomenon unfolds and you can sell poor quality , badly designed merchandise as high fashion with price tags that look like randomly generated 5 digit numbers. 

Visited stores today which I normally don't frequent . Some I visited for the first time today . Am still recovering from the quality of merchandise , the design (or rather the lack of it ) , the psychedelic colors and the rubbish being peddled as hand embroidery . 

Making allowance for the fact that color and design are subjective one can focus the attention on quality . On products retailing at Rs 37,000 and upwards one does not expect to find loose threads , missing sequins , loose stones . And hear that being marketed and rationalized as 'hand made' .

There's a virtual cottage industry of 'designers' who seem to be individuals with access to a few tailors and some embroidery makers . Passion , ideology , attention to detail are alien to this grade of designers and the stores that market such wares. One does hope that the current economic situation will force this group to completely rethink their offering .

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah ha, "There's a virtual cottage industry of 'designers' who seem to be individuals with access to a few tailors and some embroidery makers." but the page 3 chaps will never tell you that will they....

Anonymous said...

yes mr anonymous u r right

Anonymous said...

how did anonymous(2) know dat anonymous(1) was a mister? d emperor's new clothes reveal..