Is the city in for an overdose of fashion this January or will be it be “the more the merrier?”

Just when the Bangalore Fashion Week dates were getting set for announcements on January 25, Prasad Bidapa announced his dates for The Prasad Bidapa Fashion Week.

Are we getting set to becoming the pret-a-porter capital of the country? We speak to both the organisers on whether there’s any rivalry brewing or is it all fair in the world of fashion.

Prasad Bidapa will be presenting his first ever fashion week in the city. After three decades of working behind the scenes, we wonder why the fashion guru who has launched many famous faces didn’t think of a fashion week earlier. We questioned him whether it was a tad too late, “Everything has a time. I realised that Bengaluru designers don’t have a platform of their own to showcase their talent and we thought what better way to kick off the year.

The three-day extravaganza from January 18 to 20 will present the fashion history of Bengaluru, right from the days of Royal Mysore to present day by the city’s talented designers. We have Amanda Bachalli, Anjali Sharma, Calantha, Deepika Govind, Jason & Anshu, Lokessh Ahuja, Manish Saksena, Namrata G, Nimirta Lalvani, Pallavi Foley, Raj Shroff, Ritu Pande, Rony Dutta, Royal House of Mysore, Runa Ray, Sanchita Ajjampur, Seema Malhotra and Shalini Subramanian.”

Commenting on the reason that triggered this “fashion week” of his own, Prasad explains, “I have been thinking of it for a while now. The other fashion week (read Bangalore Fashion Week) has random designers. Bengaluru has enough talent to flaunt. I don’t have anything against anyone. It’s a big city and has space for everyone. If my fashion week is a week before theirs, fashion overdose is not my problem.

My designers are different and I will have top notch models like Bruna Abdullah, Indrani Dasgupta, Acquin Paes, Smitha Rao, Dayana Erappa and other models. I have no problem if my models do other shows, as long as they don’t bring the standards down.”

In its eighth phase, Dream Merchants also announced its Eighth edition of Blenders Pride Bangalore Fashion Week that will be held from January 25 to 28. Nisar Ahmed, casting director for BFW says, “I don’t understand the relevance of having another fashion week in the city, as we are already recognised. I think it will be an overdose of fashion. Now more people will come up and start their own fashion weeks.

They wanted to register themselves as Bangalore Fashion Weekend, but have gone ahead and done it in the name of Prasad Bidapa. I have never seen any fashion show in anyone’s name. We have made a name and are also going global this year with a show in Bangkok in March. This year, we have big designers like Ritu Kumar, Rina Dhaka, Abhishika Dutta and Niki Mahajan apart from other designers.”

Roshan Issac, a model who works for Prasad Bidapa feels, “PBFW is the first fashion week that will have only city designers of repute.” Question the organisers of BFW on the same and they say, “The reason why we didn’t have a lot of local talent was that we wanted to show the city talent from other cities.”

Sajad Mahajan, CEO, Dream Merchants reiterates, “We have also brought in several innovations like our BFW tunes.”

source: http://www.DeccanChronicle.com / Home> Lifestyle> Fashion / DC, Namita Gupta / January 11th, 2013