When it comes to fashion, it’s all about the location

Fashion makes us other people; fashion retail turns old spaces into someone new. Pockets of cities have rejuvenated and gentrified by waves of fashion retail. Over the past three years, south Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda has shed its stodgy blue-collar all-weather office wear to open the store windows to Masaba’s vociferous prints, Nicobar’s Indo-urban daily wear, Manish Arora’s unmissable sartorial screams and Gaurav Gupta’s molten gold sari-lehenga fantasies (which replaced Sabysachi’s subversive nostalgia).

Once, the area was allegedly quasi rent controlled due to ancient rent agreements, but after fashion glossed it over, the rents have allegedly sky-rocketed. According to one press report, designer Gaurav Gupta allegedly rents the ground floor property opposite the Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue for Rs five lakh a month.

The Fort area is expected to undergo a similar transformation after its recent fashion transfusion via Zara. The Spanish high street brand has spread itself languidly over 50,000 sq ft and five floors behind the iconic (even when veiled for renovation) Flora Fountain. The rent at Ismail building? An eye-watering Rs 2.5 crore a month. And with Zara here, can H&M be far behind?

The bylanes branching out from Colaba Causeway have been fashion victims for long, with multi-designer and lifestyle stores …read more