India Runway Week 2016
Weaving together a story for fashion designers from across India, the India Runway Week (IRW) is the platform uplifting young talent and bringing together fashion enthusiasts.
The Thyagaraj stadium in the Indian capital, New Delhi, is bustling with people from the fashion fraternity. A three-day fashion event has brought together fashion designers, retailers, bloggers, and students under one roof. It’s the seventh season of the IRW, Asia’s youngest fashion trade event, which creates newer avenues for new talent to showcase their work. The event which started on September 16 is showcasing the ‘Winter Festive 2016’ with some acclaimed and upcoming designers.
The first day of the event saw an opening show by Bangladeshi designer Bibi Russell showcasing her designs in Khadi and Indian designer Daniel Syiem with his designs in fabrics from North-East India.
Khadi is a hand-spun fabric with its threads in Indian history and tradition. Recently, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came up with the agenda ‘Khadi for nation, Khadi for fashion’ for promoting the handloom sector of India, and Indian designers seem to be working towards it.
For his collection at the show, Daniel Syiem experimented with various fabrics from North-East India besides his signature Ryndia. Ahmad Mukhtiyar/MIG
On the other hand, Daniel has been promoting fabrics from the North-East where he hails from. He has worked a lot with Ryndia, a dense and fine organic silk and the only silk extracted from cocoons without killing the silkworm. For his Winter Festive 2016 collection, he used the fabric along with other North Eastern fabrics that he has been trying to bring to the limelight.
“In the last three years, we have taken this fabric (Ryndia) to shows in London, New York, Rome and Toronto, and now we are back in India. The response has been very positive. People are very excited to see the fabric, and learn about it, its history and the story behind it. Especially in Europe, the response has been amazing,” Syiem told Media India Group, while talking about his global ventures.
After a show of clean cuts and drapes done the Indian way, the floor was taken over by designers for whom it was a debut show.
“India Runway Week is an amazing platform for designers who are just starting out. It opens up a lot of avenues. In fact, people have started approaching me after this showcase of my first collection,” Shreeya Somaiya from Indore said. Somaiya portrayed a collection in white and gold, inspired from a ballet she went to in New York, and was thankful for a platform like the IRW.
The event is put together by the Indian Federation for Fashion Development (IFFD) which aims to act as a marketing platform for players, new and old.
