Bollywood glitz at Fashion Week Grand Finale

New Delhi, Sep 3 (UNI) Bollywood glamour and a Sonal Mansingh Odissi on the ramp brought the curtains down tonight on the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, which saw the country's top designers woo domestic and global buyers with their spring-summer collections.

Ace designer Manish Malhotra's collection of women's, men's and swim wear provided the grand finale to the five-day event that attracted some of the world's biggest fashion houses from Paris, London, Japan, Dubai and the US.

It was Bollywood from the beginning till the end at the grand finale, which started an an hour behind schedule. Urmila Mataondkar opened the show with Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor barely hours after Odissi dancer Sonal Mansingh danced down the ramp for designer Payal Jain.

Designers Rohit Bal, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Arora, Rocky S, JJ Valaya and Rina Dhaka presented their collections during the event, which witnessed the presence of top models like Deepika Padukone, Tina Varghese, Miss India Neha Kapur and Joey Mathews.

Amid a Bollywood flavour provided by actors Sameera Reddy, Riya Sen and Arjun Rampal, artistes like Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, the sons of Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan dissolved boundaries between creativity by walking down the ramp.

As many as 75 designers took part in the fashion week while the number of buyers was about 170.

The spring-summer week was the first after the country's biggest fashion event went on the international format with two annual fashion weeks.

UNI RA/FZ DKB KP2310