Desi designers realise importance of affordability

Unlike, earlier when designer clothing was only

meant for the ramps or high-heeled customers, the current economic gloom and low consumer sentiment has taught a practical lesson to India designer – importance of creating affordable clothing line. So now one’s dream of owning designer wear created by the likes of J J Valaya, Ritu Kumar, Anamika Khanna, Rohit Bal and Anita Dongre may not be far away. Designers both new and established are coming up with creations for just over Rs 5,000, and less.

Apart from venturing into designing other things beyond apparel and accessories like furniture, interiors and so on to extend their reach, top designers are introducing parallel labels with affordable tags. Anita Dongre, for examples has been coming out with a range of affordable clothing over the years and has now increased her focus in the area.

Other known names like Neeta Lulla, Rahul Mishra are working on parallel affordable clothing using fabrics like brocade to create applique instead of heavy embroidery to bring down the final product cost. The idea is also to reach out to a wider consumer base across the country.

Also aiming to make designer wear accessible and affordable to a larger mass, designer wear boutique, Kimaya, owned by Pradeep and Neha Hirani introduced their new brand Karmik at the Lakme Fashion Week Summer/Resort 2012 in the beginning of this year. The idea behind this concept was to reach out to Tier II cities like Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Surat and Ahmedabad, which are showing potential for designer collection.