India fashion week at 25: what is holding back its grand ambitions?

Refine buying patterns, create subtler and creative ways to collaborate with sponsors, and operate as an industry, say designers

Last week marked 25 years of fashion weeks in India, and that would include Mumbai’s Bollywood powered Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW) and Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) supported Delhi Fashion Week. Just for comparison: Paris is in its 52nd year, Milan in its 66th, and New York, in its current format, is in the 32nd. Its legendary figure, Fern Mallis, is often credited with creating the format upon which Indian, Moscow and Berlin built their respective fashion weeks.

India’s fashion weeks are relatively young, but not so young that we can’t be self accountable. And a silver jubilee is a good occasion to look back — and forward.

Indian-origin American actor Kal Penn hosted the evening at the Jio Convention Centre; Lakmé veteran, actor and crowd favourite Kareena Kapoor Khan took to the stage to announce her return to the brand and the ramp. But the loudest laughs were reserved for LFW head and Reliance Brands’ Group Vice President Jaspreet Chandok’s quip that the evening’s seating was decided by AI, not his team.

An A-list roster of 30 Indian designers, including veterans such as Anamika Khanna, Suneet Varma, Tarun Tahiliani, Sanjay Garg’s Raw Mango, but also younger creatives such as Bodice, and Jason & Anshu, showcased two archival looks from their past finale collections. A star was missing, though. Sabyasachi Mukherjee, of the eponymous fashion house, who got his start at LFW, celebrated his own 25th year this January, with what is considered the ‘show of 2025’.

“I lived this show for the last three months, combing through, recreating, and reworking these archival pieces,” shared senior stylist Gautam Kalra, who worked on the gala show. It was not just nostalgia; Kalra and the designers revisited a time when Indian fashion weeks weren’t as heavily bridal-focused. True fans will remember Tahiliani’s jewelled T-shirts and Malini Ramani’s all-year-round resort glam.

The selected pieces were glamorous, and in some cases, recreated from memory because many designers haven’t maintained formal archives. It was fascinating to witness early experiments, such as the now-ubiquitous breastplate by Suneet Varma, or the cheeky throwback to the gold sling Manish Malhotra originally designed for Shah Rukh Khan in 2009 — a functional accessory from when the superstar agreed to close the LFW show with a fractured hand. Equally special was seeing archival lehengas from the doyenne of Indian fashion, Ritu Kumar, who rarely opens up her atelier to the fashion crowd.

Over the years, questions have routinely popped up about the relevance of fashion weeks: some find the format ineffectual for international buyers, others are finding more opportunities in newer platforms, and a few are disenchanted with sponsorship and everything that comes with it. “The promise of fashion weeks from say 15 years ago has been somewhat eroded since social media, influencer culture and the undue importance given to Bollywood showstoppers. Shows still need to be critically evaluated,” veteran couturier and FDCI founding member Tahiliani — who in 2003 became the first Indian designer to showcase at Milan Fashion Week — minces no words.