So, when did Delhi become the fashion capital of India...and why did Mumbai agree to let a largely provincial, principally Punjabi city steal its crown? As the battle of the Fashion Weeks drew to a close in April, it was instructive to remember that things weren't always as combative as they have now become.

Back in the 1980s, there weren't that many fashion designers anyway. Bina Ramani sold clothes from the Hauz Khas village, a gentrified Delhi shopping complex and Ritu Kumar ran Ritu's Boutique.

Mumbai (or Bombay as it was known then) had the glamour quotient. In the early 1970s, Parmeshwar Godrej ran Dancing Silks - then India's most exclusive boutique - and by 1976, she was on the cover of a film glossy, as big a star as the actresses she dressed. That was Mumbai's great advantage, you see: it had the movie business.

The designers were drawn to the Juhu-Vile Parle Scheme like moths to a flame. Godrej may have dressed Zeenat Aman, Parveen Babi and Dimple Kapadia. But there were others who were only too willing to dress the lesser stars. Even Akbar of Kachins, a relatively modest tailoring shop, became a legend on the basis of the clothes he made for Amitabh Bachchan to wear in his movies.

When the designer boom got properly under way in the 1980s, it was Mumbai that was at its centre. In those days, Rohit Khosla was India's best-known designer and even though he lived in Delhi, it was in Mumbai that he had the most impact. He helped his friend, Tarun Tahiliani, a management graduate with no previous experience of fashion, to set up Ensemble, India's first real designer boutique in the heart of Mumbai's dockland.