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Looking back, looking ahead
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Castle India Men's Fashion Fair captured the hottest trends
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MORE IN STORE CIMFF promises to be bigger and better next year Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.
Finally, a fashion festival that bowed to radical new trends in men's fashion. Men don't let their wives do all their shopping while they watch cricket at home anymore. Instead, they are active contributors, moving beyond deciding their favourite tie colours to now actually cultivating loyalties to designers, labels and brands. Acknowledging the changing face of men's fashion was the Prasad Bidapa Associates-organised Castle India Men's Fashion Fair (CIMFF) held over three days at the Taj West End recently.
This festival was exclusively for men's fashion and brought together brands and designers under the same umbrella — surely a first for a large fashion festival.
Despite this being the year of its inception, the CIMFF roped in some big names such as Bibi Russell, Raghavendra Rathore and Rohit Bal, local designers such as Paresh Lamba as well as India's top men's brands, such as Louise Philippe and Allen Solly.
Each evening showcased a mix of designers and brands, with breaks in between shows: a painful reality, which will hopefully be overcome by next year. Even if all the top designers were wary of jumping on the bandwagon in its first year, the models certainly had no such reservations and all of India's top male models, many of them nurtured by Prasad Bidapa, turned out in full force.
A refreshing change from most festivals where the women are clearly the stars.
No specific audience
Unlike the Lakme India Fashion Week (LIFW), the CIMFF didn't have a specific target audience. Tickets were issued to the organisers, sponsors and designers to invite their own guests, resulting in a mixed crowd of Page Three people, media and relatives of the sponsors.
"This was intended as a showcase showing," explains fashion guru Prasad Bidapa, who was instrumental in organising the festival. "Next year we hope to move the slot to January and have more dealers attend so we can make it a winter project."
Unlike other large fashion festivals which specifically target buyers or open their doors in some measure to mass audiences and not just high-end consumers, the CIMFF was more a celebration, an affirmation of the ever-growing market for men's wear in India, a coming together of big names and a three-day extravaganza.
Next year holds the promise of a bigger CIMFF, extended perhaps to five days, with more international designers, more streamlined time slots and a more definite focus on trade and fashion.
This year, everyone agrees, was a start-up year where waters were tested (and lots of fun was had). Next year, with a more well-defined purpose and hopefully more investment by the sponsors, CIMFF looks all set to grow.
As the CIMFF wrapped up, MetroPlus talked to its movers and shakers — designers, organisers, photographers and models — to find out what they achieved in this maiden venture, what their gripes were and what they look forward to at the CIMFF next year. (see box).
H.G.
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