I remember the 90s quite vividly as that’s when I started my career. It was around the end of 1992 when I began my career. I graduated in 1991 and I was with Rohit Bal (Gudda) for a few months. In 1993, I started my own label. 1994 was when I had started getting into stores, and there were very few of those in the country. For instance, in Delhi, there was Mutiny in GK1 where we all used to sell. There was another store in Bengaluru, and Tarun Tahiliani opened a store with his sister in Mumbai and I did my first big show there. All the others participating in the show were more established than me, like Rohit Khosla, Tarun, Gudda.
It was a very different market – very different India. It was the beginning of liberalisation. Consumers seeking more – greater desires, the arrival of modern cars, foreign alcohol and the introduction of global food chains in India. What was happening around helped our careers as well. Consumption went up, people started making more money and our businesses started getting better.
Ashish N Soni, during his training days with Rohit Bal, in 1990
Throwback to the time when Delhi Times and Rohit Bal had a tongue-in-cheek take on the branding of designers as ‘glorified tailors’
‘90S WAS A TIME OF STRUGGLE AND SELF-LEARNING FOR ME’
In terms of work, it was a time of struggle for me. Fashion wasn’t even called an industry, we were treated as glorified tailors. The market and designers catered to making wedding clothes, that too, specifically for women. If you were a designer it meant you would only make Indian clothes. Then there was me, who had a western sensibility and wanted to make men’s clothes, jackets and white shirts. I did try and dabble in making saris but I was a disaster and eventually I told myself that I am going to be honest to my craft and stick to what I do best. It was a very difficult time as I needed to sell 20 shirts in order to survive whereas my colleagues had to sell one sari to pay salaries. But I stuck to my belief and eventually that paid off. I always credit the 90s as a learning period in my life. When I look back, my career graph started in 2000, 90s was self-learning tenure and a seven-year internship. In the 90s, Gudda did his first big show and it was the biggest show we had ever seen and I think his showmanship started from there.
‘THE SUPPORT THAT DELHI TIMES GAVE US IN TERMS OF FEATURING OUR WORK WAS IMMENSE’
1994 was the year when I did my first solo show, it was winter and I remember the coverage vividly. It was a Moroccan-based collection and Delhi Times covered it extensively. During the 90s, the whole culture of Page 3 came with Delhi Times, it played a very big role in helping us reach our clients. There was no social media, internet has just started, there were no fashion week, our mode of reaching potential clients was word of mouth. Nobody could afford advertising or do big shows, the kind of shows we do now, so we used to work the whole year and do one show. And the support that Delhi Times gave us in terms of featuring our clothes was immense, it made us household names. It was a very big thing for us. My grandmother would call and say, ‘Oh I saw you in the paper today!’ ‘I saw you at a party, what was that party?’ It helped us in establishing ourselves as brands, and therefore, helping us promote our sales. I want to extend my vote of thanks to Delhi Times and I am sure so many people from my era would say the same thing.
– As told to Divya Kaushik
