A walk to remember

As India celebrates 25 years of Fashion Week, here's your front-row seat to the first edition, in 2000. The models, the designs, the gossip, the backstage drama, and those after-parties!

- Shraddha Chowdhury

 

"I actually worked on some girl's makeup while she was passed out on the floor because she had partied so hard!" says Ambika Pillai. The makeup artist was backstage at the first Lakmé India Fashion Week, held 25 years ago, at Delhi's Taj Palace hotel. "The girls knew how to have fun," says Pillai of the models. "We had a blast every night at the after-parties. Carol Gracias, Bhavna Sharma, Nayanika Chatterjee, Joey Matthew...All of them."

They certainly had reason to celebrate. The event, featuring 33 designers over five days, was Indian fashion's first step towards being taken seriously. A fashion week, after all, isn't just about sending models down the runway, it creates a calendar for collections to work around, it's a tool to showcase what Indian designers can do, it puts our creations on the global map, generating actual business.

Pillai and Cory Walia prepped the models; hair and makeup. Ranna Gill opened the first show, "with a lot of floral elements on pants, dresses, jackets and bralettes," the designer recalls. Monisha Jaising and Sunit Verma followed. "I think I created history," says Gill, whose label was four years old at the time. "It was a matter of pride for me. We didn't know the giant Fashion Week would become."

A quarter of a century on, India now hosts multiday events, some dedicated to just bridalwear, jewellery, men's fashion and couture. "Practically every city has its own little wannabe event", says fashion consultant Prasad Bidapa. Lakmé Fashion Week in partnership with FDCI (Fashion Design Council of India), remains the biggest. It's established Tarun Tahiliani, Ritu Kumar, Neeta Lulla, Rohit Bal, Wendell Rodricks and Raghavendra Rathore among others as the OGs. It has launched heavyweights such as Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Rahul Mishra, Gaurav Gupta, and Manish Malhotra.