PIETRO ALESSANDRO designer purses banana pebble grain with croc embossed leather designer handbags 2063.
by Emily Wax
Amid buttery leather handbags and US$200 (HK$1,560) torn jeans, Anuga Shah and her friends were shopping in Ahmedabad's newest mall in Gujarat recently, proudly humming that they were "spendy." "This week, it's all about Tommy," Shah, 26, cooes as she pets hooded sweaters inside a glitzy Tommy Hilfiger boutique. "In India today, we love to be branded. I'll spend my whole salary for a really swank brand and eat idli (steamed rice cakes) for the rest of the month."
India's growing middle and upper- middle classes have recently given rise to self-described "brand freaks," who crave the latest luxury goods. In Ahmedabad - where the father of the nation, Mohandas Gandhi, once located his austere ashram and rejected foreign textiles - it is Chanel, not homespun cloth, that generates excitement these days. India's elite have long enjoyed luxury goods imported from the West. In recent months, though, Indians who cannot afford US$600 sunglasses - but who still have some disposable income - have been splurging. Designers, including Prada, Jimmy Choo, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, as well as brands such as Rolls-Royce and Mont Blanc, have either set up shop or beefed up operations.
Last month marked the opening of two of the country's highest-end malls. At New Delhi's Select City Walk, women nearly caused a stampede as they crowded into a MAC cosmetics store in search of a popular brand of eye shadow. Women said they were thrilled that their husbands did not have to go abroad to shop for them anymore. "This year, India really unleashed the brand beast," says Saloni Nangia, associate vice president of Technopak, a marketing research firm that estimates the middle and upper-middle classes at eight million to nine million people and growing, in a country whose population is 1.1 billion.
"It used to be just five-star hotels that had the high-end shops," she says. "But now India is actually getting upgraded with both premium brands and very high-end luxury. The right real estate is here now and the brand-freaks market is only going to get bigger." In the fall, Vogue, the bible of high- end fashion, launched its thick Indian edition, the most glamorous in a long line of magazines from Elle to Marie Claire that now have editions in the country.
"This is the year of the Indian woman as a confident brand-buyer, not abroad but finally at home," says Bandana Tewari, fashion features editor at Vogue's Indian edition. "I find it refreshing that we have choices and a better lifestyle riding the optimism of the economy." In a country with a rich tradition of textiles, Indian haute couture is flourishing, too.
"India still loves its colorful silk saris. We haven't gone to wearing black and white like the rest of Asia," Tewari says. "We refuse to change our intrinsic personality. We are remembering that India has always had superbly expensive jewelry, and insanely luxurious hand-woven seven-yard saris that are 800 years old. We were sprinkling saffron on our dessert before we got caviar." Such enthusiasm is not shared by everyone. For many, the rising popularity of Western brands has served only to highlight the stark gulf between the rich and poor in a country where the majority still live in abject poverty. Along a main highway in Ahmedabad, Tag Heuer billboards jockey for space with towering posters of Mont Blanc pens; below, barefoot children beg for money.
"We are changing a lot and too quickly as a nation," laments Vijay Bhai, 81, the caretaker of Gandhi ashram. "Everyone should remember that some jobs are good when the malls go up. But we shouldn't forget what's important in Indian life. Gandhi was a humble man who wore a loincloth when he went to shatter the British empire, not some glitzy brand-name clothes." THE WASHINGTON POST Labels: chanel, gucci, pietro alessandro, prada, tommy hilfiger
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