Maximiliano Modesti on why India must claim its place in global luxury

Source Hello by Duhin Ganju
woman embroidering chikankari in Lucknow, Maximiliano Modesti says, can earn an average of ₹3,500 a month. A Dries Van Noten T-shirt can sell for around ₹5 lakh. Couture dresses can command US50,000. Schiaparelli gowns, he adds, can reach US500,000. Somewhere between those figures lies the uncomfortable economics of luxury fashion — and the reason Maximiliano has spent the better part of three decades arguing that India needs to claim more of what it creates. “We always romanticise fashion, craft, and luxury,” he says. “But it is a business.” For 33 years, the French-Italian fashion and craft entrepreneur has built bridges between India’s artisan communities and some of the world’s biggest luxury houses. Through Les Ateliers 2M, the production and craft platform he founded, he has worked with renowned names like Hermès, Alaïa, Chloé, and Dries Van Noten, while the Kalhath Institute in Lucknow, which he established in 2016, works to strengthen the livelihoods and business understanding of India’s artisans.
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Gond Artist Jangarh Singh Shyam Hits $2.15-Million Record at Mumbai's Pundole Gallery

Source The Wire by John Elliott
Indian modern art sales took a gigantic leap this week when an auction at the Mumbai-based Pundole gallery moved the star focus from the traditional top names like M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza to indigenous art with a work by Jangarh Singh Shyam being sold for a record hammer price of Rs 18 crore. That is approximately $2.15 million, including Pundole’s (generous) 15% buyer’s premium, more than six times a $303,000 record set for the artist just five days earlier at Saffronart in Mumbai, which beat a $91,000 sale at Pundole in 2023 and far exceeded prices around $30,000 or far less in earlier years. “Jangarh has left his footprints and legacy in the history of Indian contemporary art,” says Alka Pande, a leading curator, who has written a book about him. “He brought alive the magic of his ancestral village of Patangarh and initiated a style of painting which has come to be known as the Jangarh Kalam. The prices of the Jangarh Kalam at the recent auction is a tribute to his creative genius”.
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