Kerala Fashion League, a recent, day-long fashion event in Kochi had a long and impressive list of 17 leading designers from around the country and 50 models showcasing their designs. In fact, the list was so long that fashion lovers wondered how the organisers could pack so much into one night. As it turned out, they couldn’t. What complicated the issue was that the show that was supposed to begin in the afternoon didn’t start until evening.
Eventually, for the city that has been struggling to make it to the fashion map of India, it turned out to be nothing less than a setback, with leading designers returning disappointed. The first to voice her anger was Asmita Marwa, the designer from Hyderabad, in the form of a Facebook post. It went, “There is a dark side to fashion that we hardly talk about. I experienced it when I went to Kochi recently for a show…It was a disaster from the word go with 17 designers showing on one day….It was utter chaos and the final 4 designers didn’t end up showing their collection as it was past midnight…” Asmita was one of the four who were actually kept for last as the creme de la creme. Big names like James Ferreira, Aslam Khan and Raj Shroff too did not get to show their collections as it was too late.
Says Shroff who is based in Bangalore, “I have never come across such a badly organised event in my career. I was talking to one of the other designers after getting back home and wondering why did we agree to go there in the first place and waste a few days of our professional life. It was such a shame that a person like James Ferreira whom we all respect couldn’t show his collection. It was a fiasco and they simply didn’t know how to do a show.”
Sunil Menon, leading choreographer from Chennai, confirms that things went horribly wrong that day. “There was no need to bring so many designers. About 10 would have been enough. And they could have cut down on the number of garments for each person to a dozen. The arrangements for the models were also pretty bad and this is not the way to treat people who had come from different cities.”
Asmita had this to say in her post: “What was appalling was the way the models were treated…they were not given anything to eat all day and had to literally fight for dinner which was finally served past 11 pm.” Viraja Achar, a model from Bengaluru says, “Half the girls won’t even question such things. But I went and asked why there was no lunch for us on the day of the show. Then I grabbed something from Crowne Plaza, the venue, spending from my own pocket while some of the other girls went searching for a restaurant. For dinner, we literally fought late in the night and someone even tried to snatch the plate demanding coupons which were not given to us in the first place. Don’t models need basic stuff like water and clean food? In fact, they finally gave the girls food after some designers came and put their foot down that the show can’t go on unless we were fed.” She goes on to point out that they were put up at a place that was unhygienic and to compound matters, cops came in the middle of the night to check their ID cards.
Abil Dev, the main organiser, who is conducting an event like this for the first time, admits that there were lapses because of the delay in changeover time between shows. He explains further that some people whom he had entrusted with the job didn’t deliver but denies that there was shortage of food. Clearly, what was also in short supply was experience.
