Indubitably, China is regarded as one of the world’s biggest potential markets for major luxury brands. On his first visit to Mumbai, P.Ramakrishnan discovers the subcontinent’s discerning shoppers who are poised to take up the No: 1 market slot in Asia with sari-clad ease.
All images by Ayesha Broacha.
A perfectly pedicured foot alights a black Mercedes, following the soft tinkle of silver anklets. A white, French chiffon and lace sari, embroidered with exquisite red zari and zardosi work, streams out of the car, revealing erstwhile Bollywood superstar Sridevi Kapoor, as she steps out to a shower of paparazzi flashes. On one arm she carries her daughter and on the other a ruby red Rs 41,400 Christian Dior leather satchel, that perfectly compliments her exotic regalia.
The following day the leading society columns have splashed photos of the media-shy star for the teeming masses but the real question that burns in the social harem of Mumbai’s crème de la crème is; where did she get that bag?
Though still under the radar, unlike China or Japan, the luxury brand empires of the world are poised to hit India hard over the next year. The affluent middle class is said to number 60 million in India, while 364, 000 high-end tourists and visitors got off the jets, according to Abacus International. Status symbols such as Burberry's, Cartier, Daks Simpson, Louis Vuitton, Mont Blanc, Nina Ricci, Piaget, Tiara, Tiffany's and Versace have already left their emblematic marks on the market. Rumours of Dior’s entry are in the air while brand [Richard] Branson is up to its usual theatrics as it harpoons through the region this year.
For the record, Kapoor got her Dior bag in New York, where she holidayed because Dior isn’t open in India. Not yet. Her movie producer husband, who is famous for collecting Gucci shoes as he is for his mammoth film productions, relishes in his foot fetish in Hong Kong and the US.
Gucci is not in India either. Not yet.
The world’s largest democracy should be an apt demographic target for every designer label; a nation that’s still littered with royalty (who’ve turned their palaces to chic money churning nostalgic hotels), a celebrity-fueled film industry (the largest in the world no less), swing a Fendi bag anywhere in Mumbai and you’re bound to hit an ex-Miss India, World or Universe who then go on to hit Bollywood to keep their fame alight. With modelling endorsements, they have a none-too shabby disposable income too! A leaping industrial pool (burgeoning bourgeois that’s morphing into the nouveau riche), the feudal lords (remnants from pre-colonial India who own large swathes of property) and the undisputable dollar and pound powered NRI (Non-Resident Indian) nexus that returns home or invests in his/her motherland.
Break it all down to three simple categories: old money, with preference to classic brands, the corporate tier, with their proclivity to what’s “in” in New York, Paris and Milan and finally the nouveau riche, who know nothing of fashion but can see price tags loud and clear. It’s all about showmanship for them. For that last lot, a muted classic like Zegna would be thumbed down for a flashy, silky, multi-hued Versace, that just might glow in the dark. It signals look at me, I got the money!
Haseena Jethmalani, a fashion savvy socialite in Mumbai, says, “The strangest conversation I had recently was a lady at a party who had flown down from Delhi and she was showing me her diamond ear-rings. She didn’t discuss carats or design but said it cost her Rs 25 lakh. Not labels or cut but cost was advertised which I found rather funny.”
Educated in London, Jethmalani has been aware of luxury brands years before they cropped up in India over the last five years. She has her own shop (closed the day of our shoot as the vendors are on strike, protesting the news that VAT might be introduced in India!) and heads the best dressed list in the city replete with the trendy and the hip.
Heading down to Chor Bazaar, which translates to “The Thief Market”, a sobriquet that stuck the strips of shops where pre-1947, objects that “fell off a truck” from the affluent, ended up on sale in the market days later!) to pick up an antique fan.
She says, “More and more people are holidaying abroad, they know the brands, because of the proliferation of the media, through television, through channels like fTV and the vast collection of international magazines, know what they want, know what’s in. So trying to hoodwink someone who’s even slightly aware of what’s hot in the retail industry is just not going to work. Even the fake market is tiny compared to say, places like China. You might see it on say a college girl who’s walking around with an LV fake. But she knows and everyone else knows a 23-year-old kid who goes to a local school can’t afford the thousands of rupees it costs for the original. They’re doing it for fun. Fake fun.”
Noting where the well heeled, bellied bankers and businessmen were buying shirts, ties and suits in bulk, Donatella Versace saw that her goods were Eastward bound. She took her first trip to India in March this year. Not only promising to open up flagship stores but investing in India. She even participated in a fashion hunt program (think of it as an Indian-ised American Idol show but in search of the next top designer, not singer). At a press conference she said in her clipped English, “I love India. Indian women are chic and fashionable and elegant. Of course Versace will be in India.”
The love for India is a phrase that cropped up when Yves Carcelle, CEO of Louis Vuitton, opened up flagship stores in India; one in Delhi which does phenomenal business and another in the hopelessly elegant Taj hotel in Mumbai. LV is categorically the first to dip its feet into the unknown waters, only to find itself swimming along “fabulously”.
Says retail manager of Louis Vuitton India, Prasanna Bhaskar, “A major luxury brand jeweller from Europe opened a few years ago in Delhi and Mumbai and took it for granted that the market would just lap up the unsold, the rejected goods of Europe and Dubai and that it would sell in India. The Indian market is extremely savvy, very fashion conscious and brand aware. It’s not like the new mints of say a Russia or a China where any brand could be lapped up, real or fake.”
With no air-kissed invitation to the celebrity circuit, Indian actors are repeatedly seen in magazines, clutching their LVs without any direct incentive given to them by the company itself. This year alone, photo-shoots with starlets Amisha Patel and former Miss India Celina Jaitley appeared with LV embossed bags in multiple magazines. It’s easy to assume someone from the brand and orchestrated the shoot. But no.
Says Bhaskar, “When LV launched in India, we did nominal advertising. We’ve never done shows in India, no aggressive publicity campaigns and yet the goods were selling extremely well. This is a market already cognoscente of what the brand is. There was no need to educate the market. We never approached any of the stars in India nor have we worked with film magazines to use products for their shoots. When Filmfare came out with the ladies clutching their bags, which happened to be LV, that was a pleasant surprise to us.”
Sipping coffee inches away from the Mumbai flagship store, at the Taj coffee shop, she brews on how the sales have been over the last year. “Delhi sees the best sales in all of India, in fact, all of Asia at the moment. We’re seeing sales that don’t happen in the Japanese market!”
Which is surprising indeed as Bollywood is based in Mumbai, the celebrity driven city would seem like the “it” centre for retail goods but that’s not the case. The arteries around the capital are rich in large, old moneyed families that made their millions through natural resource sales (farming, cotton, linen, cloth, steel, natural gas).
“For example a lady will come into the shop, like something and then she’ll come back with her mother-in-law, sister-in-law, a cousin… it becomes like a family affair. In that cluster another lady will see something else and pick that up later. Women make sound sartorial, fashionable business decisions and it’s never an off the cuff sale. And we didn’t get whoever’s hot in Bollywood to sway any of them!”
Each and every Indian actor endorses, in most cases, multiple products. There’s an appeal to the youngish crowd that will gladly pick up a Pepsi because Shahrukh Khan, the King of Bollywood, is addicted to it but for the jet-setting, bi-annual holidays in Tuscany and Paris lot, the wrong screen idol pushing a product, it can only backfire.
Says Shobhaa De, celebrity columnist and chat show host, “The new money lot blindly follows a certain section of the society because to compensate for their own lack of self-confidence. So and so was seen wearing such and such, I must get one. But there are a few of the top families in India and the matriarchs there that make their own fashionable statements. With purchasing power that comes from their innate fashion sense, not because some star splashed on the idiot-box says so. These are the people who have a lot of disposable income. Well, access to their husbands disposable income!”
Though she herself professes to endorse no brands, her four daughters, more than make up for it. “I only have originals and don’t carry fakes,” says Arundhati De, right before regaling on her mother’s antics. “At the opening of LV at the Taj, I went with Mum and I couldn’t believe it when she took her fake bag to the opening! It was the new duffel sports sack thing which they didn’t have in the store and everyone was asking for it – I mean the original!”
De, as always, couldn’t help being cheeky by tagging along her fake HK bought sack. “Why do I need to endorse a brand? I am my own brand! It often doesn’t go with my outfit. I like the embroidered or cloth bags that would complement an Indian outfit. Just because a particular shade or style is in, if it doesn’t go with the outfit, why bother? And I know I’m not alone in this!”
Narendra Kumar, Indian designer to the socialites and fashionistas in the capital, who has four stores around the country, nods his head to De’s words. “Say in places like Japan which has a very different fashion vibe, they might buy the new cherry LV because its hot, its new, its in. Here it might not work as well. If you’re wearing a gold embroidered sari or something multi-hued, if the bag clashes with the outfit, the ladies won’t carry it!”
When international brands hit home, what should they be aware of? “Price point. Unlike a few years ago, the upper middle class and especially the upper crust, they fly out of India four or five times a year, either on business or on pleasure and they do shop! If they even remotely suspect there’s something fishy about what they’re paying for a watch say in the city versus what they would pay in, lets say Changi airport (Singapore’s airport/uber mall!), then they know it. Also, I must say, even people who buy something in India, might say that they got it in Dubai or Paris or London. There’s a certain romance to saying that they got it “abroad” than down main-street you know?”
Oh and lets not forget the caste system and social hierarchy was coined in India long before the rest of the West thought the world was flat. Status and luxury, six papers have a society column and 12 magazines, with names like High Blitz and Verve, dedicated and primarily targeted at the prolific ‘haves’. And have they got it.
Dressed in all her finery, when a local paper published a full-page picture of Jethmalani at an event, a ring on her left hand caught the eye of millions. Flooded with calls, the paper rang her up to ask, where she got a ring?
“You know something, I had bought my kid a cereal box from London and there was this colourful ring that came free with it. It went with my outfit so I just wore it! It might have cost 9 pence! The paper couldn’t believe it! They refused to publish that story and said it was a luxury brand!”
Whatever works.
