A model walks the ramp at the London Fashion Week 2006 in a Manish Arora creation. The designer will showcase at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in New Delhi on Wednesday afternoon

When the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW) gala opens on Wednesday afternoon, it will be with a new spring in its step. The refrain is: it’s bigger and better ? in size, scale and stature.

The inventory for India’s premier B2B fashion trade event, now in its seventh edition, is impressive. For five days, 80 designers will strut their stuff in 40 ramp shows and top models will sashay down two fashion runways. That’s up from 63 designers, 39 shows and a single catwalk last year.

Promises Ritu Kumar, fashion diva and president, Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), the apex body governing Fashion Week, “The event will be an eyeful in terms of the indigenous fashion handwriting that will take centre stage over the next five days.’’

Working on a larger format has Rathi Vinay Jha, director general, FDCI, happily stressed but not tense. “This year we are set to notch a series of firsts,’’ she promises.

In the next few days, apart from the glamour on and off the ramp and the even more glamorous post-show parties, the business of fashion will take top priority. So the exhibition space this year has been doubled over last year to fit 100 stalls where the participating designers can talk shop with 90 domestic buyers and 70 international buyers who are flying in from 12 countries.

Designers will be out to woo London heavyweights Harrods, Harvey Nicholas, Selfridges, Boho and RCKC. The others occupying front row seats will include Saks Fifth Avenue (Dubai), Maria Luisa (Paris), Bloomingdales (Europe), Ananda (Spain) and Zamzara (Switzerland). From closer home, some familiar names include Be:, Ogaan, Carma, Ensemble, Kimaya and Shoppers’ Stop. The dropout this year is biggie Browns of London, which had attended the rival Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai.

There will be a lot of debuts this time ? on the ramp and backstage. Ten first timers will showcase their lines and 26 fresh faces will walk the ramp.

And though WIFW has managed to rope in many Delhi bigwigs, it will miss a few regulars, too. Calcutta designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee chose to give Delhi the miss and made quite an impact in Mumbai, instead.