At Amazon India Fashion Week, it is all about the head

It’s like walking into a salon - you go for a haircut and come out post a facial instead. That’s the risk every designer takes when he decides to showcase his designs on the runway for any fashion week. Amazon India Fashion Week (AIFW) is no different; designers old and new are presenting their collections with as much zing as they can. Sometimes it takes a little more than just clothes to do the talking especially when there are back to back shows and much confusion entails. The smart thing to do then is to style up your show to make it stand out. The risk with that though is that people might walk in gasping at the probable clothes and walk out grinning about interesting headgear instead. And that seems to have been happening at this edition of AIFW a lot.

It’s only natural, you see. Multiple shows spread across five days and audiences running around trying to decipher one show from the other. It doesn’t get any easier to get attention, let alone have probable buyers for your collection. To be talked about, designers have to think out of the box. And accessories are a great way of getting that extra bit of attention. The trick is to keep them relevant to your collection and yet have them stand apart. That juxtaposition is what truly showcases your creativity. Fashion too is an art and for an artist nothing is ever left untouched.

It started with the first day itself - Anju Modi had all the models strutting down the ramp in a princess crown on top of their heads. From there on things only got bigger and better. Valaya’s show had puffed hairdos further accentuated with mangteekas, headbands, crowns, and then some even bigger crowns. Even Rajesh Pratap Singh had a few models wearing the nurse hats that went well with this hospital set up on the ramp. The next day had fedora hats highlighting Hemant & Nandita’s show and beaded headbands were seen during Pallavi Mohan’s collection. For day three, Pankaj and Nidhi pleasantly surprised everyone with spaceship-style intergalactic headgers that amused almost everyone.

And for day four, Pia Pauro went totally wild not just in clothes but with her tribal savannah feather headgears too. Aneeth Arora too had military caps used in her show. And Poonam Bhagat showed a futuristic touch with constellation-like headgears. There’s still day five waiting to be unveiled and by the looks of what’s come up so far, there’s something definitely hair-raising waiting to be exploded. And you thought fashion week was actually about the clothes? It’s time you gave the idea a second thought.