Indian fashion set to put best-(looking) foot forward

With the Big Four fashion weeks — New York, London, Milan and Paris — having wrapped up, the spotlight shifts to Delhi as Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW), in partnership with the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), returns on October 13-18.

This season, the runway will bring together over 50 designers and labels, including 16 first time participants, more than 200 registered domestic and international buyers, representation from over 12 countries and an expected footfall of more than 15,000.

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The six-day event is looking beyond the usual spectacle of celebrity showstoppers and established names, says FDCI chairman Sunil Sethi, making room for emerging talent, designers experimenting with their signatures, international collaborations and regional craftsmanship. “It is as much about discovering fashion’s next big name as seeing what its established players do differently,” he says.

The main runway schedule opens with Aneeth Arora’s Péro. She made waves with her Hello Kitty collaboration in 2024

and is reportedly revisiting another famous fandom this season with Barbie. Amit Aggarwal with pret line AM:IT

is the grand finale designer. Familiar names return but Sethi confirms that they will be stepping outside their comfort

zones.

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Manish Malhotra returns after three years with a luxury pret festive edit, while Suneet Varma explores Banaras, Namrata Joshipura goes sporty and Ashish N Soni experiments with textiles and tailoring. Samant Chauhan draws inspiration from Jaisalmer, while R|ELAN x HUEMN explores new materials.

But more than that, Sethi says, this season, 16 designers will be making their runway debuts in various formats led by the GenNext show featuring Abhishek Chauhan Studio, Subbah and Day & Age. Craft gets a regional spotlight with The

Fifth Season: A Fashion Story from Ladakh, featuring the region’s pashmina, textiles and indigenous traditions. Sustainability also finds a place through the Circular Design Challenge, held in partnership with the UN in India at the Embassy of France, and material innovations on the runway. The event will feature more than 50 retail stalls at the Stockroom that were booked within a week.

For Lakmé, associated with the fashion week for over 25 years, the runway is also a barometer of changing beauty trends. “Every season, we take a defining beauty shift aligned with how our audience actually lives,” says Ashwini Rao, vice president, Hindustan Unilever. This year, the focus is on the ‘5 PM glam reset’—a quick transition from daytime makeup to an evening-ready look. Behind the glamour, however, lies the considerable cost of putting on a show. Sethi estimates that staging one independently can cost Rs 50 lakh- Rs 1 crore, while even a modest production can run to Rs 25 lakh. When Indian designers showcase abroad, they bear the entire expense, often running into crores.

At LFW, however, FDCI and its sponsors subsidise participation to `4-8 lakh, depending on the format, making the runway more accessible to emerging talent.