Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week Autumn/ Winter 2011 kicks off on April 6, and the designer list has been announced. A whopping 141 designers will showcase their collections at the Delhi event.
Now 141 designers is an amazing number, right? So we poked around a bit and discovered some interesting nuggets, that explain the numbers better:
Out of a total of 141 designers, 77 will have ramp shows. Fifteen of them are Hi 5 designers (upcoming designers making their runway debut).
The remaining (that means 64 designers) will only display their collections in the stalls. That’s an area like an exhibition hall where you can check out the clothes and accessories, and even meet the designers. You can usually find buyers and journalists and other general visitors in this area during fashion week.
What we find most interesting is the list of designers who only have stalls. These include big names by Rohit Bal, Malini Ramani, Gauri & Nainika, Amit GT, Nachiket Barve, Prashant Verma, Ranna Gill, Rina Dhaka, Vineet Bahl and Wendell Rodricks. 
We wondered what such big names are doing off the ramp. It’s possible these well-established designers feel they don’t need ramp shows to get attention. Perhaps they’d rather focus on getting their clothes right, rather than dealing with the chaos and costs of a ramp show. Or maybe they feel ramp shows are just not worth the expense?
What do you think?
PS: Some of the recognisable names showcasing their collections on the ramp: Abraham & Thakore, am:pm by Ankur & Priyanka Modi, Gaurav Gupta, Geisha Designs by Paras & Shalini, James Ferreira, Label – Ritu Kumar, My Village by Rimzim Dadu, Namrata Joshipura, Neeru Kumar, Niki Mahajan, Pero by Aneeth Arora, Rahul Mishra, Rahul Reddy, Tarun Tahiliani, Sabyasachi Mukherjee.