New Delhi: Ripoffs of pricey designer bridal wear and jewellery in Old Delhi's bylanes might be popular among brides-to-be, but top designers have slammed the trend even as they acknowledge that replicas add to "publicity".
Targeted at customers who are in "pursuit of the perfect lehenga", textile and retailers at the Chandni Chowk market in Old Delhi sell replicas of designs by renowned designers like Tarun Tahiliani, Sabyasachi, J J Valaya, Ritu Beri, and Manish Malhotra among others. Prices range from Rs. 30,000 and go upwards into lakhs.
The actual prices of the bridal wear by designers range from Rs. 7 to Rs. 8 lakh, with designer jewellery reaching upwards in lakhs.
"If you do something good and you are successful in it, there will be people copying your clothes. We should take it as a form of flattery. It is a good publicity and someone else is getting paid for it," says ethnic-centric bridal wear designer Sabyasachi.
The bridal jewelery designer group Amrapali views the industry of fake-originals as contributing to "only making a brand more popular."
"Once a designer is copied, there are more and more of his designs out there in the market and gets more recognised. We should take that more in a positive way than in negative way. We can't do much about it but we can keep doing something new," says Tarang Arora from Amrapali, a well known jewellery chain.
Both textile and jewellery designers say they are 'alert' to the "parallel-market".
While some designers feel that the market of duplication is only earning them fame in the fashion industry, others are intend "to do something about it" to keep their designs unique and exclusive.
"In a couple of months we are converting our flagship store into a closed museum like experience, where we make sure that the visitors are serious buyers," says designer J J Valaya.
"That collection will not be shown on ramps and will not be photographed ever. So the people who will come to us can be assured they are getting absolutely unique designs," he adds.
Valaya also said that they have begun putting a registered pattern (which is a distinctive pattern tab) inside each garment which cannot be copied as "they can legally sue them.
