FASHION AT WORK
She wears her success lightly but with over 250 exclusive outlets and four exclusive clothing brands, fashion designer Anita Dongre has created a `700 crore company that knows what women want
Designer Anita Dongre is defining the way women dress Anita Dongre (centre) with sisters Meena Sehra (left) and Priyanka Hira (right)
Itis a truth universally acknowledged that the more you produce the less you want. That is certainly the motto that Anita Dongre follows. The fashion designer who has four brands, employing 2,800 people directly, with 250 exclusive outlets, 656 large format stores, and 83 multi-brand outlets across India, could well be called the queen of consumption. Hers is a `700 crore company with stores now in Mauritius and New York as well but the aesthetic that drives this money spinner is as spare and personal as her work ethic. Most comfortable in her trademark shift dresses, Dongre is quite happy to wear them in different colours till they wear out. It is her unique, frugal and pragmatic style statement that infuses everything she designs— from pockets in lehengas for the bride who dances at her own wedding to sizes that range from the culturally appropriate 6 to a more realistic 20.
It comes from having lived for a long period of time in a large joint family in Jaipur—a city the 54-yearold still goes back to for design inspiration and family affection. Joint families teach you to work together, she says. They teach you tolerance, patience, and grace. “My
were the best hosts in the world. The way they conducted their lives left a deep mark on me. They would be constantly running the joint family, have no time off and never complain,” she says. Her parents moved to Mumbai just before Dongre went to college and she remembers she could bring home five friends and her mother would always have a snack and a smile ready. “She raised three boys and three girls and still had time to stitch clothes for us,” says Dongre.
Dongre was the first woman in her family who wanted to start a business and never had any desire to be small. Her father always joked with her about wanting to be a Tata or a Birla, nothing less. She was sure she wanted a factory with a staff of 3,000. As her sister, and now president, product design, merchandising and innovation, Priyanka Hira says, “Anita was always very headstrong. She always knew what she wanted and worked really hard to get it. Another remarkable thing about her is that she wouldn’t let any negativity bring her down. She always believed that everything is possible with hard work, and till today has unmatched passion for all that she does.”
At SNDT Women’s University, she learnt to sow, stitch, cut patterns, do crochet, learn knitting—and did her thesis on Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani. Graduating in 1983, she did internships, first for over a yearand-a-half with the erstwhile royal family of Dhrangadhra, Gujarat, which ran a small high-fashion business from their house at Carmichael Road in Mumbai. They produced expensive, one-of-a-kind outfits for a boutique in the city of Washington, US. She then worked for Melco Buying Agencies, owned by Raju Goenka of Texport Syndicate India Ltd, one of India’s largest exporters. It employed over 5,000 people and was in the business of mass producing prêt clothes for American retailers such as Target. Handmade luxury and mass market prêt, both would soon be her calling card.
But that was still some time away. As soon as her sister Meena Sehra graduated, the two started a little boutique which was essentially two sewing machines on the balcony of their Bandra apartment. They soon added one master tailor and moved the unit to the bedroom which the three sisters shared. They moved again to a 180-sq ft garage, the first of several shifts, as they started to supply clothes to then big stores in Mumbai— Benzer, Sheetal and Vama. But then Dongre got bored of doing more of the same—bling, embroidery and traditional cuts. She wanted to dress the emerging Indian woman, who was intelligent, independent, not Daddy’s spoilt rich girl; a pioneer who wanted her clothes to make her feel good, not a follower who tiptoed on the beaten path. That’s how AND was born 20 years ago. Dongre tried to market this Western wear to the big stores but they had no time for her. Her brother by then had joined the business, and so the brand was born in 1999. But Crossroads Mall (since then rechristened Sobo Central) in south Mumbai preferred to rent to big and international brands, and wasn’t sure her brand would work. They finally relented and gave AND a tiny, 300 sq ft space. Within a year, her AND store became the best performing store per-square-foot in the mall.
Sehra, her sister and head, customer care, says she has a great eye for detail and strives for perfection which then makes her a workaholic as she constantly strives to do better. That work ethic has seen her add three more brands— Global Desi (ethnic wear); Anita Dongre (bridal, couture prêt, menswear and fine jewellery); and the organic Grassroot, launched in 2015, as a result of her desire to give back to society, where she is happy to wait 10 days for an outfit to reach the embroiderers, 45 days for it to be embellished and another ten days for it to be returned.
AND Designs India Ltd, the name by which her company was established in 1995, was rebranded as House of Anita Dongre (HOAD) in 2015, with Dongre as its chief creative officer. Her greatest creative satisfaction is when women come to her with their daughters and both say they’re big fans—it suggests a timeless yet immediate quality to her designs. And it is still very much her designs in a company she says she has staffed with minimes who have absorbed the same sense of style. Though each of her brands produces four collections each year, the teams are lean, with not more than six to seven designers, most who’ve been with her for some time. “I’m not merely in the business of designing clothes. I like to make women happy, and it is important to wake up every day with that feeling. That’s why I started Grassroot. When I was a young girl, I always thought I’d retire at 50 and do social work. This is perhaps even better—creating heirloom fashion, making design interventions to update their skills, and providing livelihoods to artisans,” she says.
And it’s the same family ethic that rules Dongre-land. Brother Mukesh Salwani quit his job as a banker abroad and joined the company, which her son Yash also works for now as business head. She is a proud mother. “He has a fine aesthetic sense and a good eye, He swipes his card just like any other employee,” she says. They all follow the same rules— keep to the timings, be disciplined, be diligent, be 100 per cent hands-on, and consider all work equal whether it is picking up a cup or cleaning dirt. She lives in the moment, being a huge fan of Eckhart Tolle’s Power
of Now, thanks to which she is quite able to blank out on 90 per cent of what she’s done. A Parthasarathy’s The Eternities:
Vedanta Treatise is her go-to book. She lives a quiet life with her husband Pravin, who is head of agri business at Glencore (India), an Anglo-Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company, and they’re looking forward to moving to their Navi Mumbai home next to the onelakh-square-foot factory.
She exercises with a gym trainer twice a week, does yoga twice a week, keeping herself active, even if not out there. Parties are something she steers clear of, often getting a panic attack if she has to attend one. Friend of 30 years and iconic designer, Wendell Rodricks calls her a great success story, adding that she is warm, creative, unassuming, wearing her success lightly, approachable and friendly. “‘No wonder then that between the persona, the brand and the market that the designer controls, Anita Dongre is the well-deserved success story that other Indian and international designers aspire to become a symbol of what can be attained with quiet dignity, hard work and an enviable business strategy,” he adds.
She is delighted that her clothes dress powerful women, whether it is Kate Middleton on her visit to India in 2016 or Sophie Trudeau as well as Hillary Clinton on their trips in 2018. She has found her own voice, even if it’s not always been easy—it’s been hours of work, lots of weeping sessions, several times when she has wanted to give up, but she’s had some iconic women to look up to, not in the least her 91-year-old motherin-law, a former school teacher who still paints as a hobby. She is at ease in the world, at home in her favourite cafe in New York as she is eating bajra roti in Jaipur. Just like her clothes and the women she designs them for.