The Hindu Business Line : Fashion week's strong showing

Lakme Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2007 saw an impressive line-up of fashion designers (Sabyasachi, Narendra Kumar Ahmed, Wendell Rodricks, Anupama Dayal, Arjun Saluja, Savio Jon) and emerging talent (Rahul Mishra, Samar Firdos, Nida Mahmood, Abdul Haldar, Rushab Maniar, Tejaswini Kulkarni). A slew of new and veteran models sashayed down the ramp at the NCPA's JJ Bhabha Hall. On display were the ready-to-wear (prêt a porter) lines of 43 designers from Mumbai, Delhi, Goa, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. The gathering comprised domestic and international buyers, society matrons, movie stars, corporate honchos and the media.

Anil Chopra, Vice-President, Lakme Lever said, "We are certain that we have laid a very strong foundation for developing the leading fashion event in the country and aim to integrate India into the global fashion world."

LFW got four international designers to showcase their collections. These comprised two French designers — Nathalie Garcon and the fashion house Leonard — and two South Africans — Clive Rundle and the designer brand Sun Goddess. Two retail brands, Allen Solly and Stanza, also premiered their new collections at the LFW, which was chock-a-block with shows, exhibitions, workshops, business and media seminars.

Two international stylists made a demonstrable difference to the look of every show and helped the designers aesthetically capture the mood of their collections. Ravi Krishnan, Consultant, IMG, and Selina Robson, who has directed shows at the London and New York Fashion weeks, maintain that the Lakme Fashion Week is "on par with fashion weeks across the globe."

Royalty In TINSEL TOWN

Two princes made a royal entry into Mumbai last week. Prince Andrew (younger brother of Britain's Prince Charles) met with the Magic Bus NGO volunteers and some movie people while Crown Prince Haakon of Norway inaugurated a four-day film fest at the Chavan Centre, prefacing his short speech with a moving quote: "A film is a poem made with the eye of a painter."

Indo-Norwegian film collaborations were first mooted in 2001, when Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg visited India as head of a business and trade/political delegation. The Crown Prince led a large delegation which included corporate honchos, ministers, dancers, filmmakers, musicians and Jostein Gaarder, author of Sophie's World — a dense, long novel on the history of philosophy which inspired Eric Gustavson to direct Norway's most expensive film to date.

Even as Haakon was urging Bollywood to "come shoot Norway's beautiful fjords", Cinemascapes 2006, a B2B event for the travel trade and entertainment fraternity, saw renowned filmmakers such as Shyam Benegal and Ramesh Sippy lamenting the lack of a proper film infrastructure and made impassioned pleas for facilitators — film commissions to streamline shoots, pre-and post production — on the lines of those functioning in various foreign countries (including neighbouring Sri Lanka)

The ITDC, hoteliers and tourism boards from states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and even the Andamans came to promote destinations. Foreign participants included the national tourism departments of Austria, Turkey and Malaysia. Cinemascapes 2006 was organised by SATTE, a leading organiser of travel and tourism exhibitions, in partnership with the Film & Television Producers Guild of India, the only trade body with a memorandum of cooperation with the Producers Guild of America.

At the NGMA the other evening, we enjoyed watching two films, Ray's Inner Eye and Satyajit Ray by Shyam Benegal combining interviews, film clips and archival material. We'd gone there to see Nemai Ghosh' s phenomenal black-and-white photo exhibition, `Satyajit Ray: From Script to Screen'. The exhibition's curator and NGMA Director Rajeev Lochan made the selection from Ghosh's massive archive of over 95,000 negatives spread over his 25-year association with Ray.

INDO-ARMENIAN Business

There are several potential areas of trade with Armenia where Indian businessmen can either invest or set up joint ventures, says Harshad R. Mehta, honorary consul general of Armenia in Mumbai and promoter of the Rosy Blue and Orpa Group of Companies, which have been doing business in Armenia for the past 35 years.

A diamond entrepreneur with offices in 15 countries, Mehta celebrated the Consulate's first anniversary with an exhibition of rare photographs at a Diwali gala, which was attended by Armen Baibourtian, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Armenia, and Ashot Kocharian, Ambassador of Armenia in India.

Indo-Armenian relations go back a long way: 2,500 years; the commercial relationship between the two countries dates back to the medieval period, the first recorded visit being that of the Armenian trader Thomas Cana who came to the Malabar coast in 780 AD.

As of last year, some 50 firms operated in Armenia with Indian capital and investments of about $1.1 million. The total trade between India and Armenia in 2005 amounted to $15.8 million (exports from India, $15.5 million and imports to India, $0.3 million). Next on the anvil, says Mehta, is an Indo-Armenian Chamber of Commerce.