The Dresser

On the day of Akshaya Tritiya, regarded by the Hindu Vedic calendar to be the most auspicious day of the year, there is a fish-market-like mania at the South Extension branch of popular multi-storied wedding outlet, Frontier Raas, as families stock up on wedding wear. Frontier Raas started their sari business in Phagwara, Punjab, in 1960, opening their first retail store in Delhi in 2000. They specialise in designer Indian wear, which basically means copying top Indian designer styles and selling them at half the price of the original.
Says Tushar Batra, owner of Frontier Raas, “People today have an awareness of brands, even in Indian clothing, and amongst the middle class. They know what the celebs are wearing and they want to wear it too. In the earlier generation, it was all about the sariwallas in Chandni Chowk and other marketplaces but today it is all about designer wear and people are willing to spend on this. Styles are constantly changing, and people want to stay up to date, especially for weddings.”

According to a recent McKinsey report, India’s apparel market is changing. Rising urbanisation has spawned a new class of consumers with more money to spend, and a passion for fashion. In India’s high growth retail clothing market, spend on special occasion or wedding wear tops the charts. At Frontier Raas, a typical trousseau spend, even for the middle class, is a minimum of
R2 lakh, going up to R15- 20 lakh amongst the uppermiddle class. “Many people need to get dressed, the bride, the mother, the sisters, the aunts, and everyone wants new clothes. With the increase in disposable income, even the grandmother comes trousseau shopping, and is willing to experiment with new styles, which was never the case earlier. What a grandmother spends on herself is what a bride used to spend on herself 10 years ago,” says Batra.