As a dressed-up crowd poured out from Walid Atallah's characteristically opulent show in Emirates Towers at Dubai Fashion Week just after 11pm on Monday, there were three key questions at play. Firstly, was the event a serious trade show or a bit of fun for invitation-circuit fashionistas? The quality of the day's presentations, more professional than in previous seasons, the brisk organisation and the packed buyers' section of the audience implied the former. The strangely late-at-night shows, though, placed it more within the category of evening amusement rather than a typical working day for those whose job is to attend such presentations. Rohit C Sabhiki, the event director for Dubai Fashion Week, justified the peculiar hours by comparing it to New York and Paris fashion weeks.
"We start shows at four in the afternoon, so I really wouldn't say it's the evening," he says. "And at a lot of places fashion weeks do end up at nine and 10, in New York and Mumbai for example. I think when we have 90 shows in seven days we might even start shows at nine in the morning like New York." When there are 18 shows over four days, though, would it not be wiser to start at, say, 12pm and finish at 6pm?
Secondly, will it be a season of lean, sleek, focused, recession-friendly collections or one of wildly extravagant business as usual? While the choreography of some of the day's shows and the coherence of their aesthetic acknowledged the new austere mood that has taken hold across the fashion world, others continued to push the escapist approach that has served them so well in the past - perhaps showing a little more understanding of the Dubai market.
In the case of Atallah, the Dubai-based Lebanese designer, both styles were exhibited, the show starting with a series of stark, figure-hugging black gowns graphically but sparely accented with crystals, and ending with several frothy, Swarovski-encrusted fishtail wedding dresses. The Bollywood favourite Vikram Phadnis - a former choreographer - began his dramatic show with a group of models walking zombie-like down the catwalk to a sinister tambourine beat. But while his palette was limited almost entirely to black and gold with a few jewel shades thrown in, the rich embroidery and beading of his tailored jackets, dresses and churidar trousers was as uncompromisingly exquisite as ever.
Charu Parashar, whose new bridge line Utpala will be shown today, was at DFW to watch the collections of Walid Atallah and her friend and fellow Indian designer Vikram Phadnis, and her view was that most designers have the cash-strapped buyer in mind with their current collections. "A fashion festival is a luxury thing to put across and the recession is affecting it. The orders have reduced, and the price point is also very important at this time. The buyers are not looking at ordering the high-end stuff, very exorbitant things: they want good prices and they have reduced their orders. The designers are keeping in mind something that will quickly sell and help them just sail through this recession."
Sabhiki confirms that local buyers are attending. "I have registrations from Harvey Nichols and from boutique stores in Dubai like Luxecouture and S*uce. It's a mix of high-end retailers and small designer boutiques. "Like any other fashion week," he adds, "there are three ingredients: designer, media and buyer, and the object is to get them together." None of which explains why a boutique such as Studio 8 would decide to show at DFW: it presumably is not looking for other boutiques to stock its brands in the area, but rather to appeal to its projected high-end clientele when it opens later this month.
Of course, there is also the matter of the rich private clients for whom the recession represents little more than a blip in their financial situations, and certainly nothing worth compromising on fashion for. At Atallah's show, the atmosphere in the room noticeably relaxed as his gowns left behind the austere black and returned to his usual richly embellished and ruffled style, with his following of glitzy Dubai ladies applauding enthusiastically for the tulle and lace concoctions. Perhaps, after all, in the absence of department store buyers, the social fashionistas are the ones to concentrate on.
"I just finished with Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week," says Parashar, "and there we get an immense number of serious buyers, but this time we did not get buyers from Europe and America. I have presence in two stores in Dubai through DFW, so it's worth coming back here, and you develop your personal clientele." Ah, Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week... The successful Delhi event brings us to the final source of confusion: is Dubai Fashion Week a Middle Eastern fashion week or a pan-Asian one? While home-grown designers such as Atallah and Rajiv Nihalani, whose kitsch label Royal Rickshaw had its first outing on Monday, have a supportive following at the event, many of the designers have already shown their labels at other fashion weeks such as WLIFW. Sabhiki explains the requirements for showing at DFW: "It's by invitation from the advisory board, but there are certain criteria: you are a designer based in or selling from the region, you have a good business establishment, you are capable of producing and selling."
This does not exactly narrow the field, but in the short term it could be a canny move: having exhibitors with long fashion industry experience exhibiting their wares can raise the game for young designers such as those in the emerging talent scheme, whose group show opens this afternoon's schedule. This is, after all, an event in its infancy, with just four seasons behind it, and its organisers could certainly do worse than to look towards the methods and standards of other successful second-tier fashion weeks around the world.
It also reflects a wider change in the industry: as buyers' and editors' travel budgets are slashed during hard times, the designers find it expedient to tour their collections to likely markets rather than wait for the industry pack to reach their home market. For Sabhiki, Dubai has the potential to be the central fashion week not only for the Middle East but South Asia too. "This region definitely needs a fashion week - I'm talking about the GCC, Middle East and to an extent South Asia - because of the huge demographic of consumption of designerwear here. Dubai is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, and people all around the world can identify Dubai."
What Dubai Fashion Week is beginning to prove it can do, in any case, is to provide collections that combine the traditions of a strong eastern aesthetic with the key trends that have occurred throughout the fashion world all season. The harem pants, the structured volume, the stiff ruffles and the sculptural silhouettes are all present and correct, but here they incorporate the vibrant colour of Raakhee Raipanchola's silken block shades, Atallah's over-the-top crystal embellishment, the fluid wearability of Ekta Singh or the rich brocades of Phadnis. And as long as Dubai's fashion has a distinctive identity to sell, it will be worth creating a fashion week from which to showcase it.
gchamp@thenational.ae