It was a show of the youth for the old. The recent J J Valaya fall-winter couture show in the Capital was a fundraiser to aid HelpAge India. Valaya will be holding another show in Mumbai for India's largest NGO dedicated to the cause of the elderly before the UN International Year for the Older Person runs out. Explaining the association, Valaya says, ``All of us need to be in God's good books.''During the show, 200 creations, under collections like Bohemian Rhapsody, Molten Golden, The Sky Above Us, Vitasta, Celestine and Ecclesia, were displayed by 40 leading models, including Bipasha Basu, Mehr Bhasin, Manpreet Brar, Nayanika Chatterjee, Simar Duggal, Ruchi Malhotra, Gul Panag and Madhu Sapre.
They were more than matched by celebrities comprising a virtual who's who of the fashion world. These included Rohit Bal, Rina Dhaka, Rohit Gandhi, Rahul Khanna, Ashish Soni, Aparna Chandra, Anu Ahuja, Kavita Bhartia, Malvika Tiwari, Nafisa Ali and Pamela Bordes, among others.
On the occasion, Valaya alsolaunched his Pret label, Studio Valaya, with the prices of all the garments pegged between Rs 999 (casual) and Rs 9,999 (formal), to give numerologists some more figures with which to juggle around.
The principal sponsor of the show, Swarovski, provided for the show an extensive range of crystal components such as crystal rhinestones, buttons, beads, hot-fix stones, flat backs, sew-on stones, etc. Other sponsors included Le Meridien, Sahara Airlines, S Kumar's Power Corporation Ltd, Mantra Online, Seagram, Apeejay Surendra, Goetze, Jai Prakash Industries Ltd and Ajanta Offset and Packaging.
With all the right ingredients, the show was predictably a success. Says Valaya, ``The response was wonderful. When you do something for somebody, it gives you a big high. The fundraiser succeeded in raising more than Rs 10 lakh through donor cards.''
Adds Nidhi Raj Kapoor, joint director, Communication and Publications, HelpAge, ``We have got funds to perform at least 1,000 cataract operations. More importantly, theawareness about HelpAge and its activities got a brush up.'' One only hopes that supporting the elderly doesn't ever go out of fashion.
Ageing Figures
There are 70 million senior citizens in India
40 per cent of the elderly live below the poverty line
90 per cent are from the unorganised sector, with no benefits at 60
55 per cent of all women over 60 are widows, most of them without any support
80 per cent of the elderly live in rural areas
73 per cent of the elderly are illiterate and have to do manual labour to earn a livingCopyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.