Money can't buy you love or style...

I found this piece by Hemant Sagar very interesting and in a way what is happening in our country. He was born in Delhi - look him up. LB

Hemant Sagar
To me 2009 was a very strange year. In India we saw a sudden invasion of international Luxury Brands which had already started in the preceding years, but came in full force as a daily option. This branded daily life is something the elders find very quaint and unnecessary and the `youngsters` feel left out without. A sudden imaginary competition of lifestyles many seem not to be able to live without.

Yesterday on the highway driving to a south Delhi dinner I spotted a young fellow driving a Mercedes 500 with a Blackberry firmly in one hand while chatting not only on the phone but also with his girlfriend both dressed like on a state visit to Gucciland ... followed by a black Landrover with four bodyguards carrying walkie talkies. This was a triple combination of modern day India where black money meets status symbols and calls itself Fashion.

Let`s hope 2010 will start bringing in a more subdued approach into understanding Luxury as an article of [daily] consumption.
In the same time we were confronted with a contrary of Luxury, something we never really knew before and was suddenly also a kind of Fashion because of it`s novelty: Recession. Many of my clients loved it. What a great way not to pay your bills with a real excuse at last. All of that was so unconvincing before when flaunting the latest Fendi.

Yet another aspect of Recession and Luxury or would it be more simple to call it `overdoing it` is less business because of a `Fashion Week Overdose` especially where it is not needed or even desired. With retailers in our country being more of real estate developers who rent rack space versus a profession internationally recognised for actual Style I wonder or rather shudder at the mere thought of the outlook of a budding designer who showed a first collection at 2:30 pm on day 3 of the Chandigarh Fashion Week, for example. And the buyers these Fashion Weeks boast of, I am still waiting to see, the big business seems to more of having one…. And the result is weak fashion.

But it does look as if we`re through all of that and world business climate is getting better again ... and we shall be back to spending the cash stashed in the mattresses again without looking suspicious.