The Ambani pre-wedding celebrations saw a fashion moment with Isha Ambani eschewing Indian bridal couture to glide across the venue in an archival Dior gown from 1953. However, that wasn’t the only iconic fashion moment at the wedding–Alia Bhatt chose a 160-year-old Ashavali sari from Manish Malhotra’s archival collection and Priyanka Chopra wore an archival choker from Bvlgari. More brides are going for meaningful archival and vintage pieces, like actor Kat Dennings’ Alexander McQueen gown for her wedding last December or Vogue editor Tish Weinstock’s antique lace and gown by Jane Bourvis. However, with archival luxury platforms like Saritoria shutting shop, is the Indian bride, or even the market, ready for archival fashion?
“The luxury market in India is very nascent”, says Shehlina Soomro, the co-founder of Saritoria. “We’ve had designers in Europe for over a hundred years, whereas the oldest design houses in India are thirty or forty years old.” Primarily, a handful of designers like Sabyasachi, Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla or Manish Malhotra enjoy the legacy appeal to break into the archival category. Moreover, the concept of RTW is relatively new to the industry and is surpassed by bridalwear, that the main cash space for these designers.
Anaisha Singhawee, the co-founder of Kuro, a renting and selling platform for pre-loved and archival luxury says they’ve started receiving inquiries for archival couture from brides getting married next year. “We did a pop-up to analyse our crowd in New Delhi, and had a bride walk in and she said, ‘I just have to wear it for a few hours—and I’m going to give it back to you to sell or rent again’.”
Courtesy of Kuro
Buyers are thus able to monetise bridal garments, which they usually don’t wear again. However, India is also a price-sensitive market–including the luxury sector according to Pernia Qureshi. “The number one reason people buy archival pieces today is because they are getting a coveted designer piece for a fraction of the retail cost.” Soomro recounts getting a 2008 Chanel tweed jacket for a thousand francs in a Switzerland-based vintage store– a significant reduction from the original retail price.
For Indian bridalwear, price reductions do not work the same way as seasonal runway collections by luxury brands. “They want to have eighty percent of the value back, or at least sixty or seventy percent,” says Soomro, “There is a big gap between where the seller is willing to transact and where the buyer wants to transact.”
