New Delhi: For the first time ever in the fashion history of India, India Fashion Incubator (IFI) was launched here at Kochi, Lulu Marriot to support and nurture the fashion designers and entrepreneurs across the country. The programme was launched at the second edition of India Fashion summit 2018. The IFI was inaugurated by the distinguished guests including Tom Jose IAS, Manish Malhotra . The programme is organised in association with Kerala State Institute of Design and Kerala Academy for Skills Excellence, Government of Kerala.
“In the last 25 years the Indian fashion industry has seen tremendous growth in terms of talents, structured ways of doing business through fashion weeks organized by Fashion Design Council of India as well as Lakme and IMG Reliance. However, we never had a platform to discuss and deliberate various aspects relating to the fashion industry in India and India Fashion Summit was created to fill that void. Each year we invite the leaders as well as youngsters to the summit and present before them different topics to discuss and give their points of views. Last time the theme was ‘Indian Fashion — The Way Forward’ and this year’s theme is ‘Sustainable Fashion: Hand woven Magic’’, said Vinod Nair, President India Fashion Summit “Kerala has some of the best hand woven fabrics in the country and we propose to introduce the same to the designer industry through this summit’ he added
The main aim of the India Fashion Incubator is to promote the Indian fashion community by helping creative and fashion entrepreneurs to develop their business and professional skills they need to grow to next established brand.Thiswill provide an ecosystem for sustainable development of fashion with prime focus on promoting hand-woven textiles in designer fashion and nurturing exceptional young talents in the field of fashion.
India Fashion incubator is a non-profit organization, where the incubation programs helps the designers to get a 360 degree support through one-on-one mentoring, expert, seminars and master classes, shared workspace, design studio partnerships, exclusive networking, promotional and marketing opportunities, valuable trend and business resources and market leads etc, says
Dr.SreeramVenketaraman, MD, Kerala Academy for Skills Excellence. IFI will use the latest digital technologies to mentor, network and collaborate with the incubated fashion designers he added.
India’s leading fashion designers Manish Malhotra, Peter D’Ascoli, Wendell Rodricks, Arjun Khanna, SuketDhir, Alan Alexander Kaleekal, JebinJohny and Hari Anand, fashion journalists Vinod Nair (Former Fashion Editor, Hindustan Times and Times Of India) and NeenaHaridas (Editorial Director, L’Officiel India) and Online Fashion Retail Heads including Narendra Kumar (Creative Head, Amazon Fashion), Anil Chopra (Former CEO, Lakme Lever Ltd) and NihalRajan, Vice President & Head of Design-MFB @ Myntra Designs graced the occasion.