Livemint, India
Karva Chauth is a big day for North India and the suited staff in the Dior store at Emporio Mall, Delhi’s latest luxury address , are busier than usual.
Interestingly, male customers outnumber women at the store; they’re choosing between the Dior 61 and Lady Dior lines of bags- gifts for their devoted partners, while some women hover around the Le Plisse Dior line.
Bags are obviously popular, though a walk around the elegant 3,500 sq foot anchor store reveals some quick purchases of eyewear and footwear as well. The most animated area of activity though is where John Galliano’s famed artistry has lured two of Dior’s loyal ladies to its corner . Half an hour of some perfect fits later, a purple chiffon gown and red dress from the fall winter prêt-a-porter collection are wrapped and ready.
“The high-end customers are developing very fast in emerging markets and if you do not position yourself in response to this consumer you will lose big retail. A luxury brand cannot have a middle image in India and a top image in New York; the image has to be top globally.
The consumer will not accept two positions,†says Sidney Toledano, president and chief operating officer of the Euro 12.5 bn Dior Group. It is a strategy which has worked in various new markets, says the handsome 57-year-old President as he reels off examples from Russia to China.
It is definitely a busy day at the Emporio store Toledano is visiting, but the COO, seemingly unperturbed, chooses to speak at a decibel level drowned by the activity around him. He is dressed in a fitted, steel grey, thin pinstripe suit with a white shirt and black tie, a restrained but natty ensemble that suits his near sixfoot frame well.
Toledano may head a fashion house whose silhouettes have been applauded at ramps across Paris, Milan and New York and whose legacy boasts of legends like Yves Saint Laurent and Gianfranco Ferre, but his sense of dressing, he says, come from his parents. “I’ve loved fashion since my engineering days, though I was not a dandy. I wanted clothes which expressed something. Maybe because of my Mediterranean origins I love the outdoors, going to places and meeting people and dressing well is part of the seduction process,†says Toledano.
