The Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI grand finale by péro mixed fashion with collaborative brand storytelling

Arriving at the end of a four-day calendar, the grand finale of Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI followed some rules and bent others. Conventionally, the grand finale show is designed to be a spectacle, with a generous serving of branding. The showcased is aligned with the primary sponsor—the personal care and makeup behemoth Lakmé, which usually launches a new collection in tandem with each fashion week. Scenography and showstopper echo the shades or texture of the beauty collection in focus. The show’s success often hinges on the grand finale designer’s ability to merge their collection and aesthetics with the branding.

This season, péro—the fashion label by Aneeth Arora—found a fine balance in their finale showcase. In principle, the label’s Fall/Winter 2026-27 collection had little in common with Lakmé’s choice of beauty offerings. The clothes and accessories were two-toned, in white and blue, crafted from handlooms and exploding with the whimsical artisanal details that the label is so well-known for-handcrafted embroidery and pompoms, 3D florals and delicate embellishments, prints and textures. It seemed a world apart from Lakmé’s new Hya Beach Edit, with its warm and sun-kissed vacation-ready makeup line filled with pinks and oranges, caremels and browns. Instead of fretting over tactile dissimilarities, péro and the other stakeholders focused on mood—translating the makeup collection’s out of office campaign into a conceptual fashion show that had the audience in a thrall.

The makeup subtly referenced branding, but fashion remained the protagonist. Maximalism is often association with couture and occasionwear brands, but péro is one of the few brands that can turn ready-to-wear clothing into a spectacle. Minimalist silhouettes come alive with sumptuous textures and details, every collection is driven by robust storytelling and no show or launch is ever short of an atmosphere. This is a brand that has hosted exhibition shows to celebrate its collaboration with Hello Kitty, built sets straight of Alice in Wonderland for shows and turned its Delhi studio into a fantasy land for a collection launch. There was little change that a finale show with such a brand would be anything but grand—but what made the show a winner was ultimately how ingeniously it brought its own vision together with branding goals.