 JAN 26 - There is much more interest in haute couture now, says
Bhaswati Mukherjee, a guest at Chanel's Paris show held in
the glass-and-steel Grand Palais.
Chanel, home of designer Karl Lagerfeld visited New Delhi in
October 2005. Christian Dior -- which wowed audiences with
John Galliano's blood spattered skirts and French
Revolution-inspired outfits in Paris this week -- will soon open a
boutique in New Delhi, followed by one in Bombay.
The US$17.0bn luxury giant LVMH is set to grow its presence in India in 2006.
Sheetal Mafatlal who lives in London and Delhi, is to open the first
Valentino boutique in India soon.
Besides India, soaring oil prices have also stoked Middle East
interest, reviving a client base that had slumped in the early 1990s
after war broke out in the Gulf. Until then, Arab princesses had
been the biggest buyers of haute couture, but political pressures
pinched their purses.
The oil rally has seen some of those princesses return.
Sheikh Ahmed Bin Khaled Hamad al-Thani from Qatar was a guest at the
Dior show, held in a tent at the Paris polo club recently.
"I am a client for my wife," he said. Asked if more of his friends
and colleagues would be buying haute couture after oil prices hit a
record of $70 per barrel last year, he said; "I think so."
Lebanese designer Elie Saab, said oil prices had lifted the client
base. "It's not the number of dresses per client, but the number of
clients that has gone up," she said. |
