Is the Indian bridal market ready for archival couture?

The Ambani pre-wedding celebrations saw a fashion moment with Isha Ambani eschewing Indian bridal couture to glide across the venue in an archival Dior gown from 1953. However, that wasn’t the only iconic fashion moment at the wedding–Alia Bhatt chose a 160-year-old Ashavali sari from Manish Malhotra’s archival collection and Priyanka Chopra wore an archival choker from Bvlgari. More brides are going for meaningful archival and vintage pieces, like actor Kat Dennings’ Alexander McQueen gown for her wedding last December or Vogue editor Tish Weinstock’s antique lace and gown by Jane Bourvis. However, with archival luxury platforms like Saritoria shutting shop, is the Indian bride, or even the market, ready for archival fashion?

“The luxury market in India is very nascent”, says Shehlina Soomro, the co-founder of Saritoria. “We’ve had designers in Europe for over a hundred years, whereas the oldest design houses in India are thirty or forty years old.” Primarily, a handful of designers like Sabyasachi, Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla or Manish Malhotra enjoy the legacy appeal to break into the archival category. Moreover, the concept of RTW is relatively new to the industry and is surpassed by bridalwear, that the main cash space for these designers.

Anaisha Singhvee, the co-founder of Kuro, a renting and selling platform for pre-loved and archival luxury says they’ve started receiving inquiries for archival couture from brides getting married next year. “We did a pop-up to analyse our crowd in New Delhi, and had a bride walk in and she said, ‘I just have to wear it for a few hours—and I’m going to give it back to you to sell or rent again’.”

Buyers are thus able to monetise bridal garments, which they usually don’t wear again. However, India is also a price-sensitive market–including the luxury sector according to Pernia Qureshi. “The number one reason people buy archival pieces today is because they are getting a coveted designer piece for a fraction of the retail cost.” Soomro recounts getting a 2008 Chanel tweed jacket for a thousand francs in a Switzerland-based vintage store– a significant reduction from the original retail price.

For Indian bridalwear, price reductions do not work the same way as seasonal runway collections by luxury brands. “They want to have eighty percent of the value back, or at least sixty or seventy percent,” says Soomro, “There is a big gap between where the seller is willing to transact and where the buyer wants to transact.”

For Aashni Shah, the investor behind Revivify, a retail platform for pre-loved and archival South Asian luxury, it has been a different experience. “I don’t think a buyer who’s buying archival is money-conscious,” she said, “It’s not like the archival pieces would be cheap–they would still be a lakh or two. We are not seeing that kind of work coming out of those designers unless it's chikankari. Archival pieces are appreciating in value. We will put a price for its worth today–because it’s pre-loved, we’ll see the conditions and then reduce the price accordingly. But if a 30k piece was ideally going to be priced at 2.5 lakhs today, somewhere in the range of one or 1.5 lakhs is what we would price the piece at.”

Between archival and second-hand

However, this is not the same problem as one of second-hand, demonstrated by Saritoria’s business internationally, where it continued for a while after shutting its India operations. “We would get girls in New York, London, just buying three Sabyas (Sabyasachi outfits) off the website without even asking us questions,” said Soomro, “Because they’re used to buying second-hand.”

When Kuro was established in 2021, approximately four out of five orders would be international and now three out of five are shipped abroad. Kuro had started as a renting platform and Singhvee had initially approached designers like Pratyusha Garimella to stock her garments, however, the designers were unsure of high returns. “I think rental is difficult in India,” said Soomro, “Because we always get clothes fitted to our size–with rental, you just can’t do that. Moreover, for that model to work, you have to have a really high number of rentals, for it to make sense for each piece.” Thus, Singhvee has a trial option for her outfits, only for Indian customers, to mimic the experience of an in-store dressing room–which ends up being difficult to convince buyers to part with their pieces for merely a trial, and not a final sale.

Another issue with bridalwear is associating pre-worn with an auspicious ceremony. “I remember a customer was trying to convince her mother-in-law that she wanted a Tarun Tahiliani piece for one of her events,” she says, “One of the questions the latter asked—which was awful, was–‘the person who owned this before, have they passed away?’ Maybe it’s a generational thing.”

Singhvee also feels the stigma often comes from the family. There is potential for growth for archival when Gen Z in India gains buying power. “You will not see as many millennials wearing archival fashion for their own weddings,” says Qureshi, “On the other hand, I have seen several Gen Z brides choosing to wear second-hand.”

Accessories are a significant part of any wedding, but Qureshi thinks international archival designer accessories have a bigger market in India than Indian accessories. “This is because Indian designers have not been able to establish a strong market for their accessories locally,” she says. Shah agrees and points out Sabyasachi bags and belts have the potential to become archival in the future. It is the aspirational buyer to see vintage luxury in India, and they might be more comfortable sourcing handbags like Gucci or Dior. “For the status symbol,” says Soomro, “It’s harder for someone to say, ‘That’s a Tarun anarkali’.”

India is increasingly getting ready for archival fashion, concluded Shah, who is opening a physical store in London. Qureshi believes celebrity culture can help normalise archival shopping, changing the market dynamics for Indian bridal couture. “It is just a matter of the right kind of marketing and positive client experience, and I believe that this can be a very substantial parallel mode of shopping luxury, eventually,” she notes.

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