Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI returns to Delhi Oct 13-18; Péro opens, Malhotra is back

Lakmé Fashion Week, held in partnership with the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), returns to New Delhi next week for a six-day edition from Monday, October 13, to Saturday, October 18, 2026. The main runway shows will be held at the Taj Palace in New Delhi from October 14. The week opens with the finale of the R|Elan Circular Design Challenge, a competition for designers working on more sustainable fashion, on October 13. The first runway show belongs to Péro, the label of designer Aneeth Arora, and designer Amit Aggarwal will close the week with the grand finale. Couturier Manish Malhotra returns to the platform after three years with a festive collection.

A major fashion week is more than a celebrity parade. It is a trade platform where designers show the clothes that will reach stores, wedding wardrobes and online shops in the coming months, and where buyers, stylists and media decide which labels to back. The Delhi edition falls just ahead of the festive and wedding season, which makes the collections shown here a practical guide to what will be sold and worn this winter.

Women are central to this story both on and off the runway. Two of the names leading the week are women designers running their own labels: Aneeth Arora, whose Péro opens the runway, and Namrata Joshipura, who has a primetime show. Behind every collection are many more women: pattern makers, embroiderers, weavers and other artisans whose work rarely gets credit by name. Fashion weeks that put craft and handmade work on the main stage help make that labour visible and valuable.

The decision to open the week with a circular design challenge also matters. Circular fashion means designing clothes so that materials are reused, recycled or kept in use longer instead of being thrown away. The textile industry is under pressure worldwide to cut waste, and giving the opening slot to young designers working on this idea sends a signal to the rest of the industry about what will be valued.

For readers who follow fashion as a career, the week is also a reminder that the industry needs more than designers. Production, sourcing, styling, marketing and digital content all create jobs, and the programme's focus on creators and digital culture shows how much of fashion's reach now runs through social media.

Short-term: Collections shown in Delhi will shape festive and wedding-season buying, from boutiques to online stores, over the next few months.

Long-term: Continued focus on circular design and handmade craft could push more Indian labels to build sustainability and fair credit for artisans into their business models.

Who is affected: Designers and their teams, artisans and karigars, retailers and buyers, fashion students, and shoppers planning festive and wedding wardrobes.

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