Indian Bollywood star and fashion icon Sonam Kapoor is Dior’s new ambassador. A move that strengthens the ties between LVMH’s flagship fashion house and a buoyant luxury market.
A new role for a leading Bollywood female star: Indian actress Sonam Kapoor has joined the stable of Dior ambassadors.
Sonam Kapoor will represent the Asian subcontinent, while two European personalities, the Franco-Italian actress Deva Cassel, daughter of Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci – and future title role in the remake of Le Guépard – and the Spanish musician Rosalia, have already been chosen to embody the talent of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s women’s collections.
Iconic figure of Indian cinema
At 39, Sonam Kapoor will embody a radiant but more mature beauty, alongside Deva Cassel, who has just turned 20, and the 30-something Rosalia.
An iconic figure in Indian cinema, Sonam Kapoor is also known for her keen sense of fashion. With her sister Rhea, she even co-founded her own fashion label for young Indian women, called Rheson.
But she has also made a name for herself in the film industry, and on magazine covers, by choosing her outfits wisely, without denying her culture. Some have criticized her, however, for continuing to appear regularly in a traditional sari.
Be that as it may, she has appeared on numerous style charts (for example, as a style icon (readers’ choice) by the Hindustan Times newspaper in 2015). She was also, notably, in the top ten of British magazine Eastern Eye ‘s list of “The World’s Sexiest Asian Women ” from 2011 to 2014.
Her charisma and popularity in India, with a huge following on Twitter and Facebook (she was on the Huffington Post’s list of the “100 most influential women on Twitter” in 2015) has not escaped the notice of brands.
She has been named muse for many names ranging from the mass market (Colgate, Electrolux…) to luxury ( Salvatore Ferragamo) to the world leader in Beauty (L’Oréal). And today, so Dior…
Resilience
But Sonam Kapoor’s career has not been a success story from start to finish. She has also had to demonstrate resilience, a notion that makes sense today in a luxury market facing headwinds.
Although she is the daughter of Indian film star Anil Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor did not immediately find success in Bollywood…
Her first films were commercial flops, with the exception of 2010’s romantic comedy I Hate Luv Storys.
She only really began to break through at the box office in 2013, with the film Raanjhanaa. Success followed success, and she received numerous awards from the powerful Indian film industry (National Film Award, Filmfare Award….).
In the 2010s, she became one of the highest-paid actresses in Hindi films, appearing in the Forbes India 100 list of celebrities from 2012 to 2016.
Married to Indian businessman Anand Ahuja, with whom she has a son, she has managed to think outside the box in her filmography, playing the role of a homosexual woman coming out to her conservative family in the 2019 film Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga. A role that will contribute to greater acceptance of what is still a taboo in India, and was only decriminalized in 2018.
Gateway to India
Sonam Kapoor’s arrival at Dior is all the more relevant in that her designer, Maria Grazia Chiuri, has shown her admiration for Indian culture and its age-old, ultra-sophisticated know-how through a series of winks.
In March 2023, she held her Autumn 2023 show in Mumbai, in a place with a strong meaning: the Gateway to India… Not exactly a first, since in 1962, the designer at the time, Marc Bohan, had already chosen the city, then called Bombay, to show there.
Maria Grazia Chiuri took this logic a step further, having her designs embroidered by craftswomen from the Chanakya School of Craft, based in the same city. The Chanakya School of Craft is also regularly called upon todecorate Dior runway shows.
This approach is particularly well-suited to approaching a market that is proud of its past, and that didn’t wait for Western brands to discover luxury. Luxury was at the heart of the ultra-refined lifestyle of the Maharajas. But it’s also present in Indian textile and jewellery craftsmanship, prized by all social classes and particularly at wedding ceremonies, where saris and jewels rival in splendour.
Local sensitivity
To break into the Indian market, it’s best to take local sensitivities into account.
Dior is not the first luxury House to intensify its connections with India, a probable Asian relay, albeit on a more modest scale, of the Chinese market, which is currently marking time.
Admittedly, the country, with its 1.4 billion inhabitants, is far from having reached the level of maturity of the Middle Kingdom and its 1.3 billion inhabitants (likely to account for half of global luxury consumption by 2025, according to Bain & Company).
India still only accounts for 2% of total luxury sales worldwide. But according to predictions by the British bank Barclays, the sector could be worth between 23 and 38 billion euros by 2030, a more than 4-fold increase on its current valuation of 6.4 billion euros (7 billion dollars)…
So it’s easy to see why the Houses didn’t shy away from Jio World Plaza, a luxury shopping mall inaugurated at the end of 2023 by the Reliance group in the heart of Mumbai’s business district. Dior was there, as were other brands from the LVMH group (Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Rimowa), and their competitors Gucci (Kering), Burberry and Cartier (Richemont).
Further evidence of Western luxury’s growing interest in India: the launch of a capsule collection by Tod’s with Indian designer Rahul Mishra, but above all, the recent appointment by Hermès of Indian Megha Malagatti (ex L’Oréal), to head the division dedicated to her country. This expertise is essential for Hermès to evolve in a market that is both complex and promising.
Read also > India: why Hermès entrusts this promising market to Megha Malagatti
Featured Photo: © Dior
