Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI wrapped in Mumbai this weekend, concluding a line-up of over 30 designers. Now in its 26th year, the event may still slip under the global radar compared to the likes of Tokyo, or even the much younger Dubai Fashion Week, but for India, it remains a key fixture on the fashion calendar. Even as a growing number of designers increasingly opt for destination shows and were absent this season, the platform’s relevance endures.
The event is produced by the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), alongside beauty behemoth Lakmé and Reliance Brands Limited, the country’s largest luxury retail player.
Designers such as Rahul Mishra, Gaurav Gupta, and Sabyasachi Mukherjee all began their runway journeys here. As Mishra says, “The platform remains important culturally. It allows us to share the stage with young designers from the region and collaborate with emerging talent.” This season’s mix of designers points to a broader shift where Indian fashion is looking to go global.
In attendance, alongside domestic buyers, were international retailers including Selfridges and Revolve. Indian designers’ use of craft places them in a unique position at a time when global luxury pricing continues to rise. “Even the wealthiest of consumers don’t feel there is a corresponding increase in design or craftsmanship to justify the price. Indian designers offer craftsmanship at a price that feels substantiated,” says Divya Mathur, chief merchandising officer and fashion director at Revolve.
The Fall/Winter 2026 season arrives amid growing international attention for India, pointing to a market reaching greater maturity. Last November, Galeries Lafayette opened in India, bringing with it labels such as Coperni, Marni, and Patou. At the same time, local talent is gaining visibility globally, as more homegrown labels present on the international stage. Designers such as Gupta and Mishra are now regulars on the Paris Couture Week schedule, and the store footprints of contemporary labels like Kartik Research, Verandah, and Péro are expanding.
Let’s hear it for the boys
In February, the FDCI hosted the fourth edition of India Men’s Fashion Week in Jaipur. “This week was a huge success, we received so much buzz and critical feedback that it was a sign of how men’s dressing is changing,” FDCI chair Sunil Seth said at the time. “I would say Indian men have started to really embrace fashion in recent years, and a knock-on effect is that in the last five years I have seen how Indian designers are now focusing on being experimental.”
This shift carried into Lakmé Fashion Week, which opened with a showcase titled The Boy’s Club, bringing together a new wave of menswear designers including Countrymade, Dhruv Vaish, Sahil Aneja, and Vivek Karunakaran. Countrymade is beginning to build an international presence, with its collectsion, Cenotaph, employing layered textile techniques that draw on India’s craft heritage — from mud resist printing and cold pigment dyeing, to kantha, an age-old textile technique from West Bengal and Bangladesh that involves stitching together layers of fabric. Founder Sushant Abrol launched the label in 2019 to question norms of dressing in India, but today, it can be found at international retailers such as Wut Tokyo and Politix in Beverly Hills, alongside its growing presence in India.
Traditionally, Indian labels that have crossed into international markets have been led by womenswear. Increasingly, however, it is menswear that is drawing the attention of buyers, with Kartik Research at the forefront of this shift. The five-year-old label, founded by Kartik Kumra, is now stocked at retailers including Liberty London, Dover Street Market, and Mr Porter, alongside its own stores in Delhi and New York. His show on March 19 marked the designer’s Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI debut, presented in partnership with Fashion Trust Arabia, though he has previously shown in Paris.
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“After winning the Fashion Trust Arabia Guest Country (India) Award, we thought showing at Lakmé Fashion Week aligned well with our strategy. We definitely want to grow our presence at home,” Kumra says. “It’s also five years since I started working on the brand and so it feels like a good time to do a show in India.” The label’s approach, combining handcrafted Indian textiles with understated silhouettes, reflects a broader shift in menswear. As Kumra notes, global fashion has entered a “post-streetwear” phase, adding that “the fabrics and textile language India has access to in the handicraft industry at home is a real distinction”.
For his homecoming show, Kumra presented a mix of new and signature pieces, staying true to his DNA: effortless, lived-in clothing that draws on techniques such as handspun khadi, a fabric closely associated with India’s independence movement in the 1940s, and Rabari embroidery, known for its chain-stitch embroidery and mirror work that is part of Gujarat’s textile heritage.
Indian designers know the world is watching
Designers are also adapting their aesthetics to resonate with international buyers, creating collectsions that feel globally relevant while retaining a distinct Indian identity. As Seth observes, designers and international buyers are now far more aligned with the global fashion calendar than they were a decade ago. With more brands participating in trade shows such as White Milano and Who’s Next, Indian designers are gaining greater exposure to international retail networks. “I can see a huge leap from when I began heading the FDCI in 2008. It’s been about taking baby steps every year,” he explains.
Péro, founded by Aneeth Arora in 2010, embodies this trajectory. Arora attributes part of the brand’s growth to consistently maintaining a presence in Europe through trade shows and showrooms. Known for its storytelling-led approach and roots in handmade traditions, the label retails in over 300 stores globally, largely through independent boutiques rather than large-scale luxury chains. These include Milan’s Biffi Boutique, Stockholm’s Rosens, and other carefully curated spaces that suit the label’s niche, design-led aesthetic. With a restrained palette of blue and white, the collectsion named Out of Office offered a witty take on modern work culture, designed to be worn both in the office and on holiday. Slogan T-shirts featured playful phrases such as “Trying to look busy” and “Action plan: leave early”. It also included a hand-knitted wool that evokes the richness of fur while remaining 100% wool.
Anjali Patel Mehta of Verandah, whose resortwear has built a strong retail network spanning Selfridges, Bergdorf Goodman, and Harrods, alongside numerous luxury hotel boutiques, showed on day four, with Lakmé Salon (a chain of beauty salons in India run by Lakmé) as her partner. “This has been a special year for us, after eight years of carefully curating our wholesale and luxury distribution, this feels like an inflection year — starting with our resort line featuring in The White Lotus,” Mehta says. “We’ve added some major retailers, some of whom we’d been in conversation with for years, and over the last year we’ve almost doubled our distribution.”
What lies behind the momentum
The last few years have seen a wave of Indian fashion houses benefit from corporate investment. Since 2022, Reliance Brands has acquired majority stakes in labels including Abu Jani, Sandeep Khosla, Manish Malhotra, and Rahul Mishra. Meanwhile, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited has acquired majority stakes in Sabyasachi, Tarun Tahiliani, Shantanu and Nikhil, and Masaba Gupta. Last year, the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group (RPSG) entered the space by acquiring a 40% stake in FSP Design, the company behind Falguni Shane Peacock.
Though Péro remains independent, founder Arora reflects on how much the landscape has shifted over the past 16 years. “I know the struggle of starting a brand in India, especially since most retail works on consignment,” she says. “For us, it was different right from the first season — we were showcasing internationally and working with outright orders, which gave us both confidence and cashflow. What we sold one season funded the next.” While several corporate-backed labels have expanded through sub-brands, it is not a path Arora believes aligns with Péro’s core values, even as it becomes a common strategy.
Mishra, whose sub-brand AFEW Rahul Mishra also showed this season, says: “AFEW was conceived as a global voice coming from India, so from the beginning it was important for the brand to maintain a cosmopolitan presence rather than belong to just one fashion week. It was first launched in Paris in 2023, and in the corresponding season we presented it at Lakmé Fashion Week in Mumbai.” Another example is contemporary label AK|OK, launched by long-established designer Anamika Khanna in 2019 and backed by Reliance Brands Limited since 2021. The brand has since expanded its retail footprint in India and made its London Fashion Week debut last September. This season’s collectsion, leaning into the designer’s signature draped silhouettes, dhoti pants, and asymmetric tops, felt more accessible and wearable than previous collectsions, making for one of the strongest shows on the schedule.
Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI showed that Indian designers are poised to take their place on the global stage, combining experience, creative independence, corporate backing, and expanding categories from menswear to resort. For an industry that has long been building toward this moment, the shift now feels tangible.
