Luxury Cult

Have Luxury, Need Brands

I was at the ISB Hyderabad last week and one of the questions that came up in a chat with students was the feasibility of creating Indian luxury brands that would have the same vigour and appeal of global fat cats like Louis Vuitton, Cartier or Hermes.

That’s an area that I have been thinking about more and more as I travel and explore India afresh – after a decade spent abroad – and I am left gasping over and over again at the outstanding level of craftsmanship, and sheer beauty of work across so many categories.

In a nutshell, our problem is: We have the luxury, we don’t have the brands.

Let me hasten to qualify that there is tons of tacky work that won’t make the luxury cut, but what has surprised and delighted me is the large number of examples of superb quality that are scattered in their midst, that have the heritage, the passion, the creativity, the compelling stories – all huge pluses in building luxury brands.

One such example that took my breath away is the work of Shamsuddin, an embroidery artist from Agra.  I can’t find the words to describe the effect his work had on me and my husband – we just stood there transfixed, emotionally tongue-tied, and I am not exaggerating when I say we didn’t breathe normally for the next couple of hours.  Batty as it sounds, this is embroidery with the power to move the soul.

Shamsuddin created massive artworks with needle and thread – some took him years to complete.  He used elements of zardozi – one gorgeous piece is a bouquet of flowers in a vase studded with 20,000 carats of precious and semi-precious stones – but what I found even more exceptional was his unique 3-D thread work and the amazing life-like effect that generates.  An embroidered peacock feather could easily be mistaken for a real one.

Shamsuddin is no more, but his masterpieces are housed in a private gallery at the Kohinoor Jewellers store in Agra, and we had the privilege of being taken around by the owner, Ghanshyam Mathur, earlier this month.  My favorite: a 99” by 75” rendition of Christ as a shepherd, surrounded by a gaggle of plump woolly sheep – so beautiful it hits you in the heart with the force of a sledgehammer.  You marvel too that a Muslim artisan spent eighteen years lovingly creating a picture of Christ – apparently, it came to him in a dream and then he was like a man possessed.

Shamsuddin won several awards, including the Padmashree, in his lifetime.  His work is now carried on by his son and his pupils to the best of their ability.

There are few original Shamsuddin works for sale now – Mr. Mathur isn’t parting with any from his personal museum – but I won’t be surprised if some of them surface at a Christie’s auction at a hefty price one day soon.

Can Shamsuddin’s legacy of unique 3-D hand embroidery be leveraged to create an international luxury brand?  Can his skills be institutionalized and taught to future generations of artisans, the same as Hermes has done?  Can modern design elements be brought to bear that will connect with the global consumer?  Can a talented designer be roped in to extend Shams embroidery techniques into an exclusive collection of clothing, bags, shoes?  Can Shams (and the hundreds of other “Shams” across the country) be cast as a true blue Indian luxury brand?

I am rooting for a fervent yes.  Otherwise we are leaving billions of dollars of wealth creation opportunity on the table.  And sentencing our fine Indian craftsmanship to gradual extinction.