Urbana’s A/W offerings are tech and ultra slim shirts

Urbana’s new collection for the season is inspired from architectural marvels worldwide and Middle Eastern geometric tile prints. The brand’s A/W ’17 showcases four different ranges. White and blue being the classic in formals are the two major ones called: Achroma-tech and Metropolitan blues. The white range has shades of grays and blacks and achromatic colours; Metropolitan blues are inspired from building facades of metropolitan cities which gives nice structures and textures to the collection. Third range, Morning pastels is all about nice pastel shades with a hint of gray tone giving a chalky colour effect. The fourth range Geometrize celebrates prints for the season and encompasses geometric tessellation prints.

Style is being comfortable in your skin

As Tejpal Singh, Brand Manager, Urbana says, “Style is being comfortable in your own skin. A person is stylish only when he/she carries himself/herself with elan and it can only happen if they are comfortable in what they are wearing.” This season the brand is set to launch a Tech shirt and ultra slim shirts in cotton Lycra base targeting fit Indian men. There will be play of cutaway and extreme cutaway collars, trine plackets and chiselled cuffs. The colour palette includes darker hues keeping in mind the festival dominated A/W season. The brands acknowledged ‘Hall of Whites Collection’ and with every men’s quintessential blues will complete the colour palette.

As for trends this season, Singh says, “Prints are becoming more geometric and less spaced. Structures are there from last few seasons and still continuing. Pastel shades have shifted from tints to chalky shades.” He says, in future, minimalism (less is more) will dominate trends, there will be more experimentation with colours and stripes will make a slow comeback.

Looking to good business ahead

Singh says the festival season has started early with Eid. Onam, Dussera are due in September and Diwali in October. “We see first three months doing brisk business. Due to GST, most retailers have started early EOSS and are running out of stocks. The season will be short and peak in September, ending by mid October. There will be a small hike again during end November to Mid December due to the onset of marriage season,” he points out. With good monsoon forecast he expects business to do well as consumption in Tier II and III towns is expected to grow.

Singh says, the formal shirt segment is growing at a steady 6 to 7 per cent over last few season and will continue to see the same trend. “Festive and marriage season also drive sales of formal shirts. The key to success is to fill empty shelves faster and replenish sellers faster. With market moving towards casual wear and athleisure, companies are slowly accepting the idea of casual wear at the workplace.”

As a brand they produce only as much as they can sell and correspondingly don’t have any excess inventories. Having said that they realise there will always be slow movers and hence, give a 10 to 15 per cent markdown during the season itself and get rid of non-moving stocks and get cash back in rotation.