Friday, March 4, 2011

Galliano Fashion Week show axed

John Galliano's runway show at Paris Fashion Week has been called off amid the scandal over the designer's alleged anti-Semitic remarks.

The fashion world was rocked when the couturier was fired from his post as head designer at Christian Dior on Tuesday.

His dismissal came after a police probe into allegations the 50 year old hurled racist abuse at two strangers in Paris, France, and was filmed purportedly praising Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler.

Galliano is now feeling the effects of the controversy - his press office confirms the latest collection for his eponymous label will not be displayed on the catwalk as originally planned for Sunday.

The show has been scrapped in favour of a downgraded "presentation", which Galliano is not expected to attend.

The Christian Dior autumn/winter 2011-12 catwalk show, which featured outfits created under Galliano's supervision, went ahead in the French capital on Friday

Where are the big designers at Lakme Fashion Week?

The final list of participating designers for the upcoming Lakme Fashion Week has been drawn up and one can’t help but notice that it doesn’t have an impressive line up of top notch designers.

And the handful of ‘biggies,’ that are showing, are falling in the bracket of sponsored shows.

Barring names like Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Manish Malhotra who will show, there aren’t any names that are considered as fashion gurus in Mumbai, points out one designer who opted out this season.

“And this is a Mumbai based show. So the established designers from Delhi, like Anamika Khanna, Shantanu & Nikhil or even the finale designers — Gauri and Nainika don’t really count,” argues the designer who did not want to be named.

One of the names missing from action this season is Nachiket Barve who was showing at the LFW for eight consecutive seasons. But he prefers to maintain a diplomatic stance and says, “Honestly, I’ve been very busy and now that my company has grown exponentially, I felt this was a good season to take a break and concentrate on reorganising internally.”

Another absentee, fashion designer Narendra Kumar Ahmed, says that he came to the decision because he wanted to take a break to focus on other mediums of building his brand. “Though LFW is a great platform, I wanted to see what other mediums I could explore. But I may show again next season,” he reasons.

A designer, on condition of anonymity, however, explains that many designers are also miffed with not having been given sponsored shows.