"Fashion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening," Coco Chanel had famously said. She's right. The most compelling fashion designers have been those who have engaged with the times, and the changes that have characterised the decades that define their work.

Disappointingly, despite the last year, or in fact, two, having been dominated by women willing to stand up for their rights and freedom in the face of impossible pressures, the collections shown at the just-concluded Lakmé Fashion Week were far from anything that the urban Indian woman would take pride in.