But there are indicators — the Fashion Development Corporation of India, for example, has only one representative in Chennai as opposed to large clusters in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, said Ms Rathi Vinay Jha, Director-General, FDCI. And that one representative, designer Rehane, said that the growth of the industry would be in a ratio of 1:4 compared to some of the other cities. And if hearsay is anything to go by, every owner of a fashion store in the city admits that Chennai is far behind in the segment.
Yet, fashion stores have begun to peep into existence, and customers seem to be willing to pay anywhere between Rs 4,500 for a kurti and Rs 1,90,000 for a wedding outfit. Ms Upasana Asrani, owner, Studio Saks, said, "My business has even quadrupled over the last ten years." She said that the average customer spends between Rs 5,000 and Rs 20,000 in buying clothes during the season.
Ms Rehane, who has her own fashion store in the city, said that a small fashion store would have a turnover of about Rs 10,000, while the larger stores would be clocking sales of Rs 1 lakh a day. "Otherwise, they may as well shut shop," she added.
Mr Atul Malhotra, one of the partners of Evoluzione, said, "You have to educate the market, and that is what we at Evoluzione have been investing in. It is still a nascent market, and our high-end segment is still a segment within a segment, but the people here are basically conservative families looking for a change in lifestyle." So much so that the store's collection of clothes, ranging from Rs 1,500 for men's shirts up to Rs 8,000 for kurtas, and from Rs 8,000 to Rs 15,000 for occasion-wear for women, have been bought off the racks. He said, "We have registered 25 to 30 per cent growth every year since the store began in 2002."
One of the contributors to this growth is the burgeoning IT industry. Mr Sayed Layak Ali, one of the partners of Jidoka, a store that sells trousers, said, "A lot of young consumers have started visiting my store. Because of the IT business, their buying power has increased, and they can now access a premium product."
The IT boom also means that there is a lot of traffic coming through Chennai from other parts of the world. Ms Rehane said that with the city becoming a destination for other industries, foreigners and expatriates form a large chunk of the market.
Studio Saks has a branch at luxury resort Fisherman's Cove (on the outskirts of the city) that almost exclusively caters to the high-income foreign group, who come down for a holiday.
Ms Kiran Rao, owner, Amethyst, the fashion store/café/gallery, said that perhaps 25-30 per cent of the city's 10-million strong population can afford to buy fashion products. "And we (the high-end fashion segment) form a very small percentage of that," she admits.
Perhaps because, as Mr Ali said, the customer here is more calculating, he won't buy in a hurry. "Everything is relative - it still is a phenomenal market," he asserts.
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