Upcycled denim and occasion wear highlight  Lakme Fashion Week 2024

Hosted between October 9 and 13, across The Grand hotel in Delhi and a few off-site venues such as The Imperial hotel and a colonial building in Barakhamba, this edition of Lakme Fashion Week — which will celebrate its silver jubilee next year — presented collections from over 45 designers

In tandem with Navaratri and Durga Puja, a different festivity unfolded in Delhi: the latest edition of Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW) in partnership with the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI).

Hosted between October 9 and 13 across The Grand hotel in Delhi and a few off-site venues such as The Imperial hotel and a colonial building in Barakhamba, this edition of LFW — which will celebrate its silver jubilee next year — presented collections from over 45 designers, plus student shows and retail brand presentations from Marks & Spencer and Kalki.

Additionally, the calendar included the R|Elan Circular Design Challenge (CDC), an annual competition organised in partnership with the UN in India; this year saw seven finalists, including three international labels, compete for the prize money and a change to showcase their collection on the runway in the next season. Here are vignettes from this season, key emerging trends and shows that celebrated both nostalgia and innovation.

Canvas of denim

“Denim, for us, represents versatility and resilience — qualities that resonate deeply with our design ethos. It’s a fabric that we continuously reimagine,” says Pranav Mishra, co-founder of Huemn, who streaked the material with mud for a collection in collaboration with textile company R|Elan. Huemn was among the many labels which experimented with denim this season, whether it was classic blue, washed and distressed, embellished and embroidered. This included Pero’s collaborative line with Hello Kitty, designer Payal Pratap who has used it for the first time in a collection and menswear designer Pawal Sachdevaa’s designs which featured denim treated with washes, colour, and brushstrokes. Not one to ever fade entirely from the trends cycle, denim is however set for a bigger comeback, according to Sunil Sethi, president of FDCI which also hosted The Denim Edit on day two. The group show featured five designers — Ashish N Soni, 1:11/ Eleven Eleven, Dhruv Kapoor, Kanika Goyal Label (KGL), and Countrymade — whose work incorporates the material.

Conversations around denim in recent years focussing on its water-intensive processes and use of synthetics for stretch led many designers to work on low-impact solutions. At 11.11/eleven.eleven, co-founders Mia Morikawa and Shani Himanshu showcased a line of handspun and handwoven denim crafted using organic cotton and natural dyes such as indigo and madder. Sushant Abrol, designer and founder of Countrymade used leftover denim to create a patchwork surface pattern reminiscent of camouflage. Denim was also at the core of Rkive City, a label by Ritwik Khanna who won this year’s R|Elan Circular Design Challenge, an annual competition hosted in partnership with the UN in India.

Understated occasion wear