Australia seeks to strengthen ties to India through fashion

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Aug 25, 2017

Following the success of Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW) last week, the Australian High Commissioner stated that she sees fashion as a way to bring the two nations closer together.

Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop is reported to have stressed the importance of creating bonds between India and Australia (among other countries) and suggested that “fashion diplomacy” would be one way to do this. Moreover, the Australian High Commissioner to India, Harinder Sidhu, echoed this sentiment when attending LFW’s winter/ festive fashion shows last week.

Sidhu, who has been the Australian High Commissioner to India since February 2016, said “We have been looking at different ways of building relationships with India. A good relationship has many levels to it and for the first time we have a female foreign minister who is very keen on fashion diplomacy, and this is the term we are taking forward.”

Sidhu went on to say: “Australia is one of the big producers of products like cotton and wool and India is home to a great deal of creativity and I think these collaborations are cementing the whole dimension of relations between the two countries.” She also added that the relationships between the people of the two countries is what really matters and that there is great scope for creative collaboration between the two nations.

The recent Gaurav Gupta show at LFW that Sidhu herself attended was a creative collaboration between the countrie: the event was supported by the Australian Foreign Affairs and Trade departments and Gupta’s collection used Australian-grown merino wool.