For our brand specifically, we sit at an interesting point where half our market is in India and half is outside (mostly in the West) and both markets are very, very different. We find flexibility in being able to design for one market or the other, or somewhere in the middle and so haven’t had to cater drastically to Western ‘luxury’ market expectations. That said, of course, we keep in mind what the market will invest in, and have to adjust accordingly.
Overall, the textile industry is a truly global supply chain, with a large degree of synergy needed, and China has also demonstrated it can work with these other textile hubs. Many Southeast Asian manufacturers still depend on imported fabrics and materials from China, linking their export strength to this ongoing upstream dependency—at the fair, this was evidenced by 40% of overseas buyer delegations hailing from Southeast Asia.