Paper short abstract:

This article maps out the field of designer fashion in India. It examines and explores how ideas and ideals of national identity shape and link commercial industry practices and strategies to moral and national developmental discourses precariously balancing 'tradition' and 'modernity'.

Paper long abstract:

Based on extensive fieldwork and in-depth life/career interviews with fashion designers and professionals, mainly in Delhi, this article describes the fashion eco-system in India and explores how as it has developed since the late 1980's. The field of fashion in India has been institutionalised and professionalised in tandem with rapid social change and economic reforms. The article explores how fashion designers, a new category of creative professionals negotiate their socio-professional identities, practice and manage their work in an unstable and competitive environment. How they give meaning to and balance commercial constraints and creative ideals, positioned as they are in between production, mediation and consumption. By analyzing designer work practices and narratives, and the framing of 'Indian fashion' at fashion weeks, it argues that in this field, ideas of national identity, social change and 'development' are inextricably linked to personal and commercial narratives, and that 'doing something Indian' can be a multi-purpose strategy which guides industry conventions and practices and links personal and national narratives in a moral developmental discourse of growth and social responsibility.