The art selling There's only one indisputable fact in this story. Ritu Beri is pretty. Very pretty, actually, with feline good looks accentuated by a bee-stung mouth that breaks into the most devastating smile the moment a camera flashes. And these days, the flashlights have never been too far from Beri. She is photographed at the tea party hosted by the Prime Minister on International Woman's Day. She is in the society columns, air-kissing her way through Delhi's haute monde. And there she is on FTV, traipsing down the catwalk behind a line of nipple-flashing beauties, dressed in her Spring Summer 2002 collection - all bosom-revealing chiffon bustiers and bikini bottoms that could easily double as dental floss. That's the models, of course. Beri herself is in black leather trousers and a matching cropped jacket that shows off her tiny, aerobicised waist to best advantage. As she trips lightly down the catwalk to accept the applause of the assembled press and buyers with the aplomb of a true star, it is easy to see why fashion Svengali Mounir Moufarrige chose Beri to front the global pret-a-porter label he is to launch this summer. Beri looks smashing for 33, though the Mounir publicity machine has thoughtfully lopped off 5 years from her age to sell her as a youthful 28-year-old to the international market. Sell. Yes, that's what this is all about - selling an image that the fashion press can flash from coast to coast. And where image is concerned, Beri's is near perfect. She is young, sexy, vivacious and - after many years as a dial-a-quote fashion expert in India - adept at the art of the sound-byte. What's more, some will have it that she can even design clothes. Aha, the clothes. That's where the rub lies. Moufarrige insists that Beri is a fledgling fashion genius who has the makings of a major talent. Suzy Menkes, queen of the fashion hack-pack has assured Beri's place in the fashion Paristocracy with her rave reviews in the International Herald Tribune. But if you believe Beri's peers in the Indian fashion business, the woman can't cut her way out of a paper bag. In their view, Mounir's latest protege - the last one was Beatle daughter Stella McCartney, who turned the beat-up fashion house of Chloe around with her rock-chic vision - has been coasting along on a talent that is conspicuous by its absence. In its stead, she has traded on her good looks and some well-judged and perfectly-manipulated hype. While some of this can be dismissed as the jealous ranting of rivals, this criticism is not entirely unfounded. Consider this. Beri was the first fashion designer to hire a public relations agency. The honour went to the bearded Dilip Cherian of Perfect Relations who would inundate newspapers and magazines with press releases detailing Beri's latest exploits along with a glossy picture of his client. Journalists, perpetually starved of copy and coping with a dearth of pretty pictures which they could slap on the colour pages, were only too happy to regurgitate the turgid PR-speak with Beri's face serving as much-needed eye candy. Inevitably, Beri soon became the staple of newsprint. She also did duty on television, holding forth on everything from the export market to the status of women. And it wasn't long before she parleyed this celebrity into a book for Penguin India, titled 101 Ways to Look Your Best. In no time at all, Beri became the fashion designer with the highest name recall in the market. If you asked the man or woman on the street to name a fashion designer, chances are the answer would be Ritu Beri. Sure, they knew who she was. So what if they hadn't seen her clothes? After all, as bitchy rivals of Beri are wont to say, who has? This seems a little tough on Beri who has been producing two collections every year for more than a decade. A graduate of NIFT (or not, depending on whom you ask), she started her label Lavanya around the time that her first marriage came to an unhappy end. Elaborate, even ornate, salwar-kameezes became the staple of Beri's label, though she did a fair amount of casual Westernwear. But, like most other designers of that time, Beri realised that the real money lay in the marriage market. And never one to miss out on a business opportunity, she opened a bridal boutique on the first floor of her Greater Kailash II residence. But Beri didn't just content herself with selling zardozi-encrusted lehengas to Punjabi brides in Delhi. She took the best of exotic India and sold it to such tony stores as Liberty (London) and Galleries Lafayette (Paris). What's more, unlike her contemporaries, who produce exquisite garments only to retail them under the store label or that of an international designer, Beri sold under her own name, a rare achievement in the highly competitive international market. She also trained with French couturier Francois Lesage, who honed her talent and gave it a more sophisticated edge. Beri's first major breakthrough, however, came in July 1999, when she became the first Indian designer to show during the La Semaine de la Haute Couture (Haute Couture Week) in Paris, a feat she repeated in January 2000. In October 2000, she presented her pret-a-porter 2001 collection at the Petit Palais in Paris, even as she designed Madhuri Dixit's clothes for a Hindi movie back home. Undeterred by this somewhat schizophrenic existence, Beri was back in Paris in March 2001, presenting her daring pret collection for Spring-Summer 2002, this time under the patronage of Moufarrige. Unlike other Indian designers who fall into the trap of showcasing exotic India (witness J.J. Valaya's predictable show in Paris this year, built around clothes 'inspired' by Indian royalty) Beri showed clothes with an international edge. There were silver mesh bikinis worn under long coats, short dresses embellished with a sequinned heart motif, skirts that were a modern take on the sari, and patchwork leather bustiers, jackets and shirts, all of which seemed destined to fly off the shelves. Small wonder then that Moufarrige has such high hopes of her. He is determined to turn her into the new face of international fashion - advertising budget be damned. But Beri's face has already garnered the kind of publicity that Big Bucks can't buy. She was featured in an eight-page spread in OK magazine. And it won't be long before she pops up in the pages of In Style or even Vogue. Of course, her jealous rivals will still claim that she is only the face in front of the label. Behind the gloss and glamour, they will mutter darkly, there is a French design team which actually makes the clothes. Not that Beri will care. And why should she? She has already proved that a thing of beauty is not a toy forever.