Funny Exams

Monday, August 8, 2011


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Riding the Bridal Wave - Times News Network

Saturday, August 6, 2011

For Indian designers bridal wear is big business, while their Hollywood counterparts would swoon in horror at the thought of being asked to dress a dulhan! Nona Walia reports

Hollywood wedding gowns
Jennifer Lopez wore a dazzling cream white dress from the 2005 Vera Wang collection. Eva Longoria wore an Angel Sanchez mermaid gown, with a scoop back, and a long train when she married in 2007. Jennifer Garner wore a Vera Wang empire waist wedding dress. Nicole Kidman wore an elegant ivory-coloured tulle wedding dress designed by Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga. When singer Gwen Stefani wed on September 14, 2002 in London, she wore a gorgeous pink and white wedding dress designed by John Galliano for Dior.

IF you are a bride in India, and if you can afford it, chances are you wore/will wear a lehenga-choli or saree designed by a Tarun Tahiliani, Ritu Kumar, Manish Malhotra and their ilk on your big day. Politician Praful Patel’s daughter Niyati wore many ensembles by Manish for her week-long wedding functions, Shilpa Shetty wore a Tahiliani design. (The recently-married GVK heiress Mallika Reddy wore Abu Jaani and Sandeep Khosla at her spectacular Hyderabad wedding, just like Twinkle Khanna a decade ago. Ritu Kumar dressed Anoushka Shankar when she took saat pheras.)

Brides = big bucks
In India, weddings are big business and there’s big moolah to be made by wooing the dulhan.The recent Delhi Couture Week, witnessed a spectacular bridal tamasha. On the catwalk were outfits priced between 3 lakh and 25 lakh. Almost all were sold out, immediately. Bridal wear remains highly lucrative for most Indian designers, who’re cashing in on the growing $20 million Indian wedding industry. Interestingly, the clients are becoming global. Says Sunil Sethi, president of FDCI, “Couture in India is bridal wear. It’s the bread and butter for designers. Last season, Sabyasachi on the second day had made a business of one crore. Manish’s entire collection was sold out to a single buyer. That’s the appeal of bridal wear; money is huge and people are willing to spend. The payment is usually undisclosed, profits are high. Bridal is couture and bespoke and can be bought off the rack, altered to size. Girls are crazy about their bridal dress, and they choose the dress first and then decide, ‘I want to get married now’.” 

Tough market to ignore
Says fashion expert Asha Baxi, “The Couture Week is overloaded with bridal wear. Yet, some designers like Rajesh Pratap and David Abraham do only high fashion. But the profits are so amazing that most designers can’t resist the temptation.”

Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee recently made an observation, “Till Indian designers do bridal wear, they’ll never feel the pinch of recession.” Adds Sethi, “The business is so good that even designers, who were till recently doing pret and evening wear like Gaurav Gupta and Varun Behl, are now doing bridal wear. Designers are making the costliest of outfits and selling them anywhere between 5 lakh and 20 lakh.” Designer Varun Behl agrees, “I got lured into it, though I do a lot of evening wear. But almost 50 per cent of my sales are from bridal wear.” Fashion expert Harmeet Bajaj agrees, “The market is only growing bigger.”

The West side story
Personally, for designer Tarun Tahiliani, ‘bridal wear’ involves creativity and meticulously engineered clothes. Says Tarun, “Designing bridal wear remains important for Indian designers, because every woman wants to look her best for one of the most special events in her life — her wedding.” Internationally, the designers don’t reveal their bridal sales. Says designer Suneet Varma, “Armani, Valentino and Elle Saab have bridal wear collections. But they don’t do too much publicity about it. Almost all couturiers do have bridal collections. No designer reveals his or her bridal business in the West.” Riding the Bridal wave
The twist in the tale is that the business of designing bridal wear is getting huger as patronage becomes global. According to a report, a typical Indian wedding in the US costs between $75,000 and $100,000 — three times more than the average American nuptials. Say designers Nikhil and Shantanu, “The wedding industry is pegged at around 50,000 crore and growing, our profits are amazing.”

Couture is bridal in India
For the fashion designer, bridal wear is about showing superb showmanship. Says designer JJ Vallaya, “I feel couture in India deserves an indigenous definition.” How important is bridal wear to a designer in his collection every season? “Significantly important. Often, couture is also considered largely classic in order to protect its timelessness. I would say an A-grade couturier would be deriving up to 70 per cent of his revenues from bridals in India.”

Last season, Sabyasachi on the second day had made a business of Rs one crore. Manish’s entire collection was sold out to a single buyer. That’s the appeal of bridal wear; money is huge and people are willing to spend. - Sunil Sethi, president of FDCI.

India’s top couturiers display their wedding collection with pride and have special collections for dulhans. However, their Hollywood counterparts would baulk at the idea of doing a wedding collection. They wouldn’t even consider it, although they would make an exception for a top actress, royalty or a close friend. Actress Katherine Heigl wore a stunning Oscar de la Renta wedding dress on her special day. When Katie Holmes married Tom Cruise in 2006, she wore an exquisite Armani wedding gown. But when it comes to wedding gowns, the first choice of the rich and the famous is Vera Wang. She has dressed wedding gowns for many well-known public figures, such as Chelsea Clinton, Ivanka Trump, Mariah Carey, Victoria Beckham, Avril Lavigne, Sharon Stone, Uma Thurman, and Kate Hudson. In India, there is no one name that leads the pack, it’s a pie everyone wants a piece of.
 
Resisting the lure
Are all designers tempted by the bridal business? “No,” says designer Ritu Kumar. “The market has lots of designers who are specialising in bespoke garments. There are some designers such as Rajesh, David and Rakesh who don’t do bridal lines.” Says designer Raghavendra Rathore, “Bridal wear generally is the base of all designs for the other collections as it lays the foundation of motifs, materials, colours and trends.” The ateliers that fabricate these clothes are making bridal wear into an art form.

Can there really be fashion without the bridal segment in India? “No,” says Manav Gangwani, “Usually, bridal outfits are more expensive due to the fact that they are more heavily embellished. There’s skill in making them, the satisfaction of the stitching, the fall and the rustle and the silhouette. It’s the ultimate glamour.”
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Try this with your Girlfriend

Thursday, August 4, 2011


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Hero Honda Karizma ZMR

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

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