Aneeth Arora’s brand Pero showcased a second collection, this time for spring/ summer 2021, at Lakme Fashion Week titled ‘Locked in Love’ and inspired by Harajuku style and the recent lockdown.

Pero’s latest collection was a riot of pastel hues, frills, girlish ginghams, and the brand’s signature relaxed silhouettes. Inspired by the vibrant, constantly evolving street wear styles of Tokyo’s famed Harajuku district, Pero presented an innocent and playful aesthetic that was kept elegant by the addition of tailored pieces and fine textiles.

The collection was showcased with a fashion film in collaboration with Flying Boots Production. Models danced about a dollhouse-esque set complete with a retro-style pastel coloured kitchen and little garden. The film introduced different ‘lockdown characters’ including “the bookworm”, “the baker”, and “the sleepyhead” who playfully showed how they were spending lockdown in their floral haven.

The collection’s handwoven textiles included traditional ‘mashru’ weaving techniques from Gujarat as well as taffeta silks and gabardine from the south of India and stripes woven in Banaras. Pero's dollhouse-esque set matched its doll-like clothing - Lakme Fashion Week- Facebook

Pero has notably been expanding its distribution in Japan through multi-brand retailers and perhaps this collection is also an ode to the brand’s growing Japanese fan base.

Walmart-owned ecommerce platform Flipkart delivered over 10 million orders in the first five days of its flagship Big Billion Days sale event, with broad-based growth across categories such as smartphones, fashion, large appliances, electronics, furniture and general merchandise. The number of transacting sellers on its platform grew by 1.5 times during this year’s sale period compared to last year.

The platform also recorded a 666 million visits, of which 52 per cent were from Tier III cities and beyond. Twice the usual number of customers visited its mobile category this year, with a 3.2x increase in sale of premium smartphones, predominantly driven by Apple, Google and Samsung. In the fashion category, it sold over 16 million products from across 40,000 brands.

As per RedSeer Consulting, both Amazon and Flipkart clocked sales of around $3.1 billion in the first four and a half days of the festive period, exceeding the $2.7 billion in gross sales during the entire period last year.

Industry trackers Forrester Research and RedSeer Consulting peg the cumulative sales by the two e-tailers at about $4.7 billion on average from October 15 to October 22.

Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has launched India's first khadi fabric footwear. Each footwear is priced between Rs 1,100 to 3,300. KVIC has launched 15 designs for female footwear and 10 designs for male footwear. The footwear will be sold on the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) portal.

The footwear was launched by Nitin Gadkari, Union MSME Minister via a video conference. At the conference, Gadkari highlighted the potential of the country's footwear sector for employment generation and exports, He said, after China and the US, India is the third largest footwear manufacturer globally. It is a Rs 1.45 lakh crore industry with a domestic market of Rs 85,000 crore and exports of Rs 45,000 to Rs 55,000 crore".

The minister will request actor-turned-politician Hema Malini to endorse the Khadi footwear on a pro bono basis and become its brand ambassador.

adidas has launched the specially curated ‘Sneakers Day’ initiative that celebrates the best of adidas performance and originals sneakers while making it accessible to a wider audience through a host of engagement activities and impressive deals. Through this initiative, adidas aims to bring together diverse audiences and drive impetus to a fast growing and already strong sneaker community, offering various exciting deals and access to limited adidas memorabilia along with a year-long supply of sneakers. Any consumer who shops worth Rs 25,000 or more from adidas online or select retail stores, may win a year-long supply of adidas footwear and merchandise.

Adidas AG is a German multinational corporation, founded and headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, that designs and manufactures shoes, clothing and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe, and the second largest in the world, after Nike. It is the holding company for the Adidas Group, which consists of the Reebok sportswear company, 8.33% of the German football club Bayern München, and Runtastic, an Austrian fitness technology company. Adidas' revenue for 2018 was listed at €21.915 billion.

The fourth edition of the India Intimate Fashion Week (IIFW) will be held virtually on October 23, 2020. India Intimate Fashion Week (IIFW) is a platform designed to shed a spotlight on all facets of the intimate apparel and personal care industry. Ideated to break the taboo around lingerie and it’s over sensitization, the founder Niraj Jawanjal created the fashion week to be bold, beautiful and unique in its own way.

In 2018, India Intimate Fashion Week (IIFW) launched its much-awaited calendar in Mumbai. The calendar ‘Black Magik’ by IIFW was an endeavor to set new trends in Indian Fashion Industry. It is the newest and the most glamorous intimate and beach /swim fashion calendar dedicated to intimate wear featuring the hottest models posing in the exotic locations of Forest Hills Tala. With Black Magik’s success India Intimate Fashion Week is intended to bring more to the Indian Fashion Industry in coming seasons.

As per RedSeer Consulting and Forrester Research, India’s biggest e-commerce players, Amazon and Flipkart, have together raked in $3.5 billion during the first four days of their flagship festive season sales events, multiple brands and industry analysts.

Manish Tiwary, Vice President, Amazon India, discloses, this year Amazon launched over 1,100 new products with consumer-facing brands such as Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Asus, Lenovo, HP, LG, Whirlpool and Bajaj Appliances witnessing their biggest two-day sales.

Walmart-owned Flipkart launched electronics goods in the work-from-home segment, with large-screen televisions, laptops, IT accessories and peripherals witnessing an increase of over 1.4x from last year’s levels.

The overall e-commerce industry grew by 25-30% during the four-day period. The sector is on track to increase sales by 30-36 per cent during the one-week period compared to last year, the early numbers indicate. The sales surge in the first four days has come despite lower average discounts by brands this year.

Overall, e-commerce sales over the extended 30-day period are expected to grow to $6.5-$7 billion (Rs 48,000 crore to Rs 51,800 crore), according to separate estimates by RedSeer and Forrester Research, which said the numbers would be boosted by new online shoppers. About 75 per cent of festive season sales are recorded in just one week between October 15 and October 21, according to Forrester.

Fashion e-tailor Myntra recorded 100 per cent growth in orders received during its one-week long festive season sale. According to the company, 45 million customers visited the company's portal out of which 4 million shopped 13 million items during the 'Big Fashion Festival' sale that concluded on October 22.

Myntra said that 51 per cent of shoppers on its platform were women. With Tier II and III cities emerging strong during the event, Tier III cities have witnessed a 180 per cent growth in new shoppers as compared to the previous edition. Using its omnichannel network, with over 1,000 stores and 100 brands, Myntra was able to fulfill customer deliveries in close to around 11,000 pincodes,

The company claimed to have on-boarded 1 million new customers during the event, registering 105 per cent growth in new customers over the previous edition of the sale. Among the new customers, T-shirts, shirts, jeans and sweatshirts, casual shoes and kurtas, were popular with men, while kurtas, kurta sets, tops, dresses and jeans were popular with women. Top brands among the new customers were, Roadster, HRX, Highlander, Mast & Harbour, Libas, Sassafras, Dressberry and Vishudh, among others.

The company claimed that orders peaked to 9,000 articles per minute. Myntra said that customers from tier 2 and 3 cities added accounted for 50 per cent of the total sale during the Big Fashion Festival. Emerging non-metro cities contributing to the new customer growth included Lucknow, Patna, Ranchi, Visakhapatnam, Jaipur, Surat, Nagpur and Bhopal, during the seven-day event.

AEPC recently organized a virtual B2B meeting between Indian apparel exporters and UAE-based leading buyers. The meeting, organized in association with Embassy of India in Abu Dhabi, saw participation of 30 apparel exporters from India and about 20 brands and buyers from UAE including top players like Lulu Group, Landmark Group, KM Trading and Apparel Group.

Dr. A. Sakthivel, Chairman, AEPC, said that India is focusing on higher value and specialized products such as manmade apparels, medical textile and technical textiles. He invited UAE brands and buyers of UAE to increase sourcing from India. UAE investors can set up manufacturing facilities in India directly as 100 per cent FDI is allowed or through joint ventures,” he said.

Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of India, Abu Dhabi, UAE, said their main aim is to increase exports from India to the UAE and there is tremendous potential for doing it. Dubai with its large trans-shipment port offers additional advantages as it caters to the needs of six other countries in the region.

Sudhir Sekhri, Chairman (Export Promotion), AEPC urged the UAE-based buyers to come and partner with India in building R&D, design innovation and incubation centres in India. It also urged them to build textile design, forecasting and market research centres in India for global and Indian textiles.

The Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) launched Designer Stockroom online sale at the Lotus Makeup India Fashion Week (LMIFW). The Designer Stockroom virtual shopping fair features over 70 brands, many of which were showcased at the recent LMIFW.

The Designer Stockroom offers upto 70 per cent discounts on garments. Designers and brands involved in the Designer Stockroom include Abhijeet Khanna, Ekru, Essgee, Sini Lifestyle, Half Full, Suman Nathwani, Shyam Narayan Prasad, Naturally Anuradha, Pankaj & Nidhi, Antar- Agni, Sameer Madan, Guapa, Esse, Rajdeep Ranawat, and Taika by Poonam Bhagat, etc.

According to FDCI, The first online edition of LMIFW was hugely successful and innovative. The digital element of the show resulted in greater online interactions. It succeeded in changing the face of Indian fashion weeks even after social distancing measures are eventually lifted.