Evam Narcissus
- Linen: Summer 2012 is going to be hot, hot, hot and linen is the fabric of choice. Linen pants and cut-offs are hot faves for the coming season
- Higher trouser hems: If you have shapely ankles, you are in luck. Almost all the designers showed this trend, going for cut-offs or cropped trousers.
- Trouser cuffs: The shirt cuffs were feeling lonely and so trouser cuffs made an entrance. If you are aren't quite ready to embrace this one, just loosely roll up your trousers when you go on vacation next
- Super-brights: Along with super-brights like oranges and hot pink, there are electric blues and greens to choose from that are guaranteed to make you stand out.
- Checks: Checks in different colours, styles and intensity. Check jackets worn over check pants. We obviously couldn't get enough of this particular print.
- Narrow fit: The one-size-too small, narrow silhouettes dominated the ramp. If you hit the gym, the payoff are these sharp suits with short jackets with sharply defined shoulders and well defined waists along with narrow fit trousers.
- Muted shine: For evening wear, don't go for in-your-face bling. Go for muted silvers and golds.
- Something Indian, something western: From ultra-modern kurta-pyjama and the Indian tuxedo to short sherwani jackets and casual bandhgala shirts—subtle fusions of western and Indian sensibilities make for great fashion statements
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Here’s a trick question. What do you think does more business in India—men’s fashion or women’s? The answer, surprisingly, is men’s. “While men’s fashion makes up about 40 per cent of the market, the share of women is only about 32 per sent,” says Shantanu of the Shantanu & Nikhil label. (The rest is kids, ‘young adults’ and accessories.) Now surprising fact No. 2: the men’s fashion retail space is also far more organised than the women’s segment, the latter being fractured by a constantly innovating ‘unorganised’ sector. Still, despite these windfall-bearing facts, it was only last year that designers began to woo male clients. Till then, they were relegated to being “plus ones” at fashion weeks.
No longer. This year, when the Van Heusen Indian Men’s Week rolled into Delhi, 17 names showed up at the event. There was lots of talk about “brand-building” and “awareness”. “Designers who have never done men’s fashion before had collections this time for Men’s Week,” says Ashish Soni, whose resort-friendly collection had jackets and shirts in “super-bright” colours like hot pink and lime green contrasted with cool white linen pants.
The fact that designers were finally taking men’s fashion seriously was evident in the range of experimentation on the garments. Starting from Troy Costa’s almost-second-skin fitted suits with texturing like zari transferred onto garments by heat-sealing it or his ‘Indian tuxedo’. Innovations were wide and varied, from the incredible handloom weaves by Rajesh Pratap Singh right up to a thoroughly modern take on the kurta-pyjama by the Abraham & Thakore label.
Hot orange with linen by Soni
What’s egging on designers is the surge in sales in the wedding/festive season, the stretch from August right up to March. “Indian men have started dressing up, experimenting a lot more now. A good sign is that wives and girlfriends are no longer buying for them,” says Rahul Khanna, one half of the Rohit Gandhi-Rahul Khanna designer duo. This “adventurous” side to the Indian man is a relatively new development, in fact any indication that he was taking fashion seriously came only in the last couple of years. “Ironically, I think it was when the recession was at its peak. Maybe it was just a way to give themselves a boost that men started to splurge. Whatever the reason, I saw a surge in sales around 2009,” says Rahul. The target audience for all these designers is the young, urban man who goes clubbing and has no qualms about being called a dandy. As Troy puts it, “They go to spas, they hit the gym. They look better, slimmer and sharper than previous generations. And they follow fashion. They want to look their best.” For the dandy, spending Rs 15,000 on a well-cut suit isn’t such a big deal. Designer Manoviraj Khosla explains that men shop a little differently from women. “Women shop specifically, like for a party. Men will come in, order 20 shirts, five jackets, several trousers at one go and then forget about clothes for the next six months.” Which means in the men’s category any sale is a big sale.
Another big comfort factor is that almost all designers now offer customisation. A lot of the trends that look unwearable on the ramp, like ultra- narrow trousers or waist-hugging jackets, are refitted to suit individual builds. There are regional variations too. Designers make allowances for bulkier builds in north India and shorter heights in the south when they retail in different areas, especially in ready-to-wear.
The bandhgala tux is in
Apart from domestic demand, there’s also a new-found confidence in the Indian men’s fashion fraternity itself. “Big international brands have been hugely influenced by some traditional Indian styles like bandhgalas,” says Rahul Khanna. He cites the example of Zegna’s ‘Guru jacket’ or Canali’s new ‘Nawab jacket’, both looks inspired by the bandhgala. Ashish Soni, who’s been chipping away at the desi male’s view for quite some years now, is uber-excited about how well Indian fabrics and detailing lend themselves to globally appealing men’s fashion wear. “How many times can you buy the same two-button jacket? We can add those subtle twists, on the collar, cuffs or in the piping that international brands cannot. We have access to some great fabrics and textiles for creating western silhouettes. And so many international buyers are coming to us now,” says Ashish. So this time, on the ramp there were bandhgala shirts, suits with zari, dhoti pants, churidaar trousers et al.
The only thing holding designers back today, says Troy, is a lack of infrastructure. “Right now, if you have to be a menswear designer, you have to be a tailor first. We just don’t have enough skilled master-cutters or tailors. I have been screaming myself hoarse that we need to set up training schools for them. In the west, you place an ad for a tailor, you’ll get one with a three-year degree. And in men’s fashion, tailoring is essential,” he says.
The way forward, says Rajesh Pratap Singh, is to utilise what we have in terms of textile engineers, weavers and artisans and then build on the way our garments are finished and its quality. “We have a very strong and distinct voice when it comes to design in menswear. We just need to let it find its own direction,” he says.
