Some issues are accumulated. Story by story, argument by argument, until it becomes impossible to ignore what it was saying as a whole. Issue Three of French Press Global is about the structures underneath. The money, the silence, the borrowed glamour, the wars we choose to see and the ones we choose not to. Fashion is the entry point. Power is the subject.
We open, as we must, with Lakshmi Rana as our cover story. Indian fashion has spent years bending itself into awkward shapes trying to court celebrities who cannot walk a ramp, and I am done being polite about it. The supermodel is the rightful centre of this industry, and this cover story is a long overdue correction. Lakshmi has spent decades doing what A-listers cannot: she carries a garment. Completely, authoritatively, without the outfit having to compete with her personal mythology for space. A designer’s work breathes differently on a woman who understands it at the level Lakshmi does. That is a professional distinction. One this industry has been too distracted to make.
The preference for celebrity showstoppers is, at its core, a crisis of confidence: a belief that fashion needs borrowed fame to validate itself. Lakshmi’s career is the most elegant argument against that thinking. She has been the muse, the face, and the standard-bearer for some of the finest designers this country has produced. The work speaks for itself, and she has always let it. Her presence on the runway is its own kind of power.
This cover story is as much a reckoning as it is a tribute. The industry owes Lakshmi Rana a debt: of recognition, of credit, and of the simple honesty that she has represented Indian high fashion with more grace, range, and longevity than anyone else walking through a lehenga today. She is an epitome of grace. She is the reigning queen of high fashion in India. And there is no greater showstopper for any designer working in this country today. Her life’s work deserves to be told to every designer whose silhouettes she has elevated, and to every young woman who has watched her own a room with nothing but presence and confidence. Lakshmi is the reigning standard.
The piece I am most proud of in this issue, right after the cover, is Mayank Choudhary’s Blood, Sweat and Sequins. When the world got distracted by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez co-chairing the Met Gala and New York filled up with protest posters and bottles of urine, Mayank did what good journalism actually does: he looked past the spectacle and found the actual story. While that controversy swirled on the outside, Manish Malhotra was on those steps carrying the names of his artisans literally stitched into the fabric of his look, over 50 craftspeople acknowledged in the lining of a garment worn at fashion’s most photographed moment. Mayank then went further. He went to people from Manipur, where Reena Ahanthem and Jayshree Koijam of 11 Tareng are building a sustainable luxury label out of conflict and weaving tradition, where weavers work on looms in their homes and are paid without negotiation because the craft commands that respect. He went to Delhi’s Shahpur Jat, where Wasim Masterji has been a tailor since he was 14 and whose studio now runs on workers doing double shifts just to keep pace with the hunger of an industry that never asks how the embroidery gets done. That is what French Press Global is here to publish.
And then there is Sia Sethi. I say this in every letter and I will keep saying it because it remains true: my Executive Editor in Chief is brilliant, and The Devil Wears Amazon Basics is the most compelling proof of that yet. Sia took one evening, one red carpet, one man, and laid out four facts about Jeff Bezos in a single frame: his media empire lost three hundred thousand subscribers, he fired a third of his newsroom, he silenced his opinion editor, and he sponsored fashion’s most exclusive evening. Only one of those facts was ever going to make it to the Met Gala livestream. That is exactly the point, and Sia made it with the kind of precision that most journalists spend entire careers trying to find. Full marks. Every time.
From there, we move into the economics of beauty. Our feature on gemstones is a market story as much as an aesthetic one: high-quality emeralds and rubies are appreciating assets, and the conversation around heirloom and trousseau jewellery in Indian culture deserves the rigour of an investment lens.
The Lens this issue is working hard. Our CSR initiative coverage through Adayu sits alongside The Economy of Dupes, one of the most important pieces in this issue. Dupes are an economic reality shaped by inequality, aspiration, and the demographics of who actually buys fashion in this country. We explain why they exist, who they serve, and why moralising about them is a luxury of the privileged.
Racial Bias in Pop Culture Representation uses the Coldplay controversy and Major Lazer’s cultural shorthand as a lens on the internalised bias the Indian diaspora has absorbed through decades of Western media consumption. It is an uncomfortable read. It should be.
And then there is the question of which wars get airtime. Why Some Wars Are Louder Than Others examines the framework behind global media’s editorial decisions: who benefits, who decides, and what it costs the rest of us to accept that hierarchy without question.
This issue also carries something I wrote myself, and I will be direct about why. There is a map of India circulating on news channels right now that is almost entirely saffron. West Bengal has turned BJP for the first time in the party’s 46-year history. The NDA and its allies now govern 20 states and 2 union territories. The Hollow Map is a structural question about what happens to any democracy when its opposition destroys itself through ego, fragmentation, and the persistent choice of personality over platform. A democracy requires a credible opposition as a constitutional imperative. This needed to be said, and French Press Global is the publication that will say it.
Issue Three unveils at Tastemakers Table Edition Three at Silq, an evening that celebrates one of Maison French Press’s cherished client: Dr Geeta Grewal. It is the kind of room this magazine was made for.
Seema Gujral’s piece uses The Promise as a starting point for a wider conversation about what Indian bridal fashion is actually doing: who it serves, what it owes to the women who wear it, and where it draws from. Jatin Malik’s feature is a portrait of a designer working with quiet conviction, building an androgynous vocabulary for Indian fashion at a moment when the industry needs exactly that kind of courage.
Mariyam Speaks, the expert column written by Mariyam Khatri of BANANA LABS for FPG, returns for its third chapter with a focus on what what community means the brand, and how Mariyam strives to keep block-printing alive by sharing years of her family's generational craft practice. Anu Ahuja and Vaishali S bring their work with the Femina Miss India pageant and the Ministry of Textiles into focus. And we close with Ananta Resorts coverage, because travel, as this issue argues throughout, is always about far more than the destination.
Issue Three delivers clarity. And right now, that is the most useful thing we can offer.
Chaiti Narula
Editor-in-Chief
