Anamika Khanna: ready for a reunion

There is no doubt that Anamika Khanna is one of India’s most talented and well-regarded fashion designers. With no formal fashion training, she has built her brand’s signature on hybrid silhouettes that work for women of all shapes, and painstaking surface embellishments that balance traditional embroideries with modern application. On the hanger, her clothes look like cherished heirlooms, yet wear like red carpet entrances. To anyone, she would be the ideal designer to open the newly-reunited FDCI x Lakmé Fashion Week; the first time the twain have met since their split in 2006. Even so, she has had to face comments like ‘Why Anamika? She’s a Calcutta designer!’, the source of which she chooses not to share. “Why would anyone say something like this? I’m an Indian designer; I could be from anywhere in the country!” she tells The Hindu Weekend. This only goes to show the deep chasm that the Great Fashion Week Split created when it happened. Over the years, it grew into a rivalry — the pre-existing Delhi-Mumbai Divide helped — that manifested in real business outcomes for designers based in Delhi and Mumbai, as well as elsewhere.