The Fashion Design Council of India is the driving force behind the 16th edition of the Blenders Pride Glassware Fashion Tour, which goes beyond haute couture and reimagines its legendary history of 15 years. Through the viewpoint of a more sustainable, inclusive, and diverse world of fashion and lifestyle, the Fashion Tour this year brings to life young, vivid, and developing representations of “Pride & Authenticity.”
The Fashion Tour is scheduled to travel through four major Indian cities: Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Gurugram. Ace designer Ashish Soni will serve as the tour’s curator in chief. It will feature a magnificent collaboration between top fashion designers and illustrious figures from a variety of disciplines who are altering the interests of today’s youth in lifestyle.
The Kolkata chapter will focus on “Pride in Bringing Twists in Traditions” and feature a collection created by Shantnu & Nikhil in collaboration with Harmanpreet Kaur, captain of the India Women’s National Cricket Team, that captures the essence of cricket.
The Hyderabad chapter will present “Pride in Sustainable Fashion,” in which fashion designer Amit Aggarwal and Nuru Karim, one of India’s top 100 most influential architects who is dedicated to having a positive impact on the environment, will exhibit a blend of contemporary sustainable techniques in fashion.
The Mumbai chapter will focus on “Pride in Breaking Norms of Conventional Fashion,” where designers Falguni Shane Peacock and Dizy, the first and only female graffiti artist in India performing classic graffiti, will collaborate to present a daring street-luxe collection inspired by the burgeoning Indian street-art culture.
Designer Kunal Rawal will present a collection that celebrates diversity and inclusivity in contemporary Indian fashion at the Gurugram chapter of the Pride in Celebrating Diversity by Defying Labels event. Harrdy Sandhu, one of this generation’s most popular musicians, will provide the reverberating soundtrack.
These designers and artists were introduced by The Curtain Raiser through a spectacular new idea called “The Wireframe.” It’s a dramatic, imaginative skeletal that represents the overarching philosophy of this eagerly anticipated fashion event. The Curtain Raiser captured it all, from showcasing developing trends of inclusivity and diversity to touchpoints of sustainability in fashion to blending influences of pop culture through musicians and performers.
The Curtain Raiser also included Blenders Pride Glassware’s “The Showcase,” one of India’s top venues for finding and supporting emerging models, multimedia makers, and fashion designers. The Showcase 2021’s winning teams collaborated to deliver a dynamic fashion presentation with the theme “My Planet, My Pride,” which served as the platform for conscious fashion throughout the event.
An enlightening discussion on the changing nature of the Fashion Tour was then led by Kubbra Sait, the evening’s celebrity host, along with Bollywood star and fashion icon Sobhita Dhulipala, designer Ashish Soni, FDCI Chairman Sunil Sethi, and Pernod Ricard India Chief Marketing Officer Kartik Mohindra. The Fashion Tour will capture emerging trends in lifestyle, from the fusion of fashion with sports, architecture, art, and music through exciting collaborations, to the intersection of fashion & tech as Fashion Tour launches a first-of-its-kind Metaverse experience, according to these influential voices in the fashion and lifestyle industries.
The “Style Gallery” titled “This is not a T-shirt,” which was created by Ashish Soni and FDCI, is yet another amazing experience that the Fashion Tour will debut. It will display T-shirt ensembles created by more than 60 fashion designers and in-house clothing brands, who have enhanced or even deconstructed the plain T-shirt into a design honouring their true interpretation of the four themes of the Fashion Tour. The virtual avatar will be introduced with a distinctive fashion display in the Metaverse, while the gallery will be built with sustainability in mind, employing recycled materials during the physical tour.
The “Blenders Pride Glassware Fashion Tour Park” Metaverse platform, a first for the industry, will also be unveiled as part of the Fashion Tour. Young viewers will get a unique opportunity to experience the Fashion Tour in this immersive universe. The Fashion Tour Park will offer interactive areas for visitors to freely explore in what would be India’s first fashion tour in Decentraland. These areas include a Metaverse virtual fashion show, a treasure hunt to win invitations to the Fashion Tour, and a designers’ zone that displays NFTs of T-shirts created by the Fashion Tour’s four participating designers, among many others.
Speaking at the event, Kartik Mohindra, Chief Marketing Officer of Pernod Ricard India, stated, “This year, we’ve redesigned the Blenders Pride Glassware Fashion Tour after 15 memorable editions. With an astonishing new format that is more inclusive, varied, and youthful, it ushers in a new era of fashion and lifestyle. The two major players in fashion are once again brought together by our ongoing relationship with FDCI to create a new spectacle for the nation with this year’s Fashion Tour. We’re even stepping into the Metaverse and developing a futuristic platform for young viewers to have an immersive experience with the Fashion Tour. With this, we move forward with our mission of recognising the “Pride” of today’s children through innovative projects around the 16th edition of the Fashion Tour.”
Sunil Sethi, the FDCI Chairman, discussed the organisation and said, “Both Blenders Pride Glassware Fashion Tour and the Fashion Design Council of India are well-known brands in the fashion and leisure sectors, and we are pleased to continue our collaboration with them. This collaboration is an appropriate method to demonstrate our desire to redefine and rethink the changing face of Indian fashion.”
Ace designer Ashish Soni is the chief curator of the Blenders Pride Glassware Fashion Tour 2022 “The Blenders Pride Glassware Fashion Tour is genuinely broadening its boundaries and going above and beyond for its 16th iteration. The Fashion Tour Park metaverse, a one-of-a-kind Style Gallery, and other exciting new components that will bring to life a fashion experience unlike any other have all been included.”
