FROM THE EDITOR
The first grown-up New Year’s Eve party I attended was at the Tollygunge Club in Calcutta (it was still Cal then), back in 1990. Having moved from Hyderabad, Kolkata’s glamour was almost unimaginable. I stared goggle-eyed at cocktail dresses and sequinned LBDs, dinner jackets and tuxes. It seems to follow naturally that Kolkata was where I learnt to love fashion—it was the city where I saw my first fashion show, gave my first NIFT entrance exam, visited the first fashion boutique (Mona Pali), and decided that fashion would be a part of my life. Over the years, Kolkata has become a quiet powerhouse. It has given us Anamika Khanna, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, and Kiran Uttam Ghosh. More designers have emerged recently: Nupur Kanoi, Shantanu Goenka, Debarghya Bairagi and Navonil Das of Dev r Nil, Kallol Datta, and Sneha Arora. And with the opening of the Quest Mall, international luxury brands are also looking East. Bazaar has always reflected the zeitgeist, and this month, junior fashion editor Krishna Mukhi does our first shoot in Kolkata, in ‘Urban Traditions’, while designer Navonil Das takes us on a style tour of his hometown in ‘Fashion Goes East’. Bazaar’s legendary editor Diana Vreeland famously said that “the eye has to travel”, and this month, we take her words to heart. In Nagaland, at the 50th Hornbill Festival, photographer Pratch Siridhara captures the season’s best trends in ‘New Season New Look’, while in the Himalayas, Bazaar favourite Anand Gogoi lenses the most feminine ensembles in ‘The Romantics’. There are also new destinations to look out for, from fashion
superpower-in-the making Qatar (‘Jewel of the Desert’) to the travel destination of the year, Morocco (‘Beyond Marrakesh’); ‘Mumbai Chronicles’ looks at the maximum city through
the eyes of some of its most illustrious residents. What’s New has traditionally been the theme of Bazaar’s January-February double issue, and this year, we once again shoot the models of the year. Two of the year’s biggest are on this cover: Rasika Navare and Ninja Singh, the latter set for the sort of international stardom last seen by Lakshmi Menon.
There is also the 2014 fashion and art hot list, the beauty cure-all, and of course, the style rules of the season. In short, everything for the new year. Enjoy!