Pakistani Fashion:Fact Or Fluff?


Why this sudden obsession with 'fashion' in Pakistan?
The Pakistani Fashion Industry, if it can be called one*(see below) has witnessed quite a mature spurt in the last fifteen years. Early pioneers like Rizwan Beyg, Maheen Khan and Faiza Samee have since dressed royalty, film stars and have even created diffusion lines in an effort to "reach the masses and affect fashion at a macro level; while designers like Deepak Perwani, Amir Adnan, Maria B. and Nadya Mistry have become retail czars and czarinas. Amongst their midst there are the 'begum darzans (society tailors) and the seasonal designers who wake up one day and feel like 'designing' but sooner than you can say 'cross stitch' have 'closed shop.' With the sad demise of the Pakistani film industry, and social and religious mores discouraging the flourishing of dance, theater and art, fashion has become the 'New Entertainment.' 'Fashion people' or 'fashionistas have created their own 'cliques' (rather than a community), where membership is seen as covetable commodity and an alternative and enviable lifestyle.

What is the current state of Pakistani Fashion?
Disconnected,.internecine, incestuous, elitist, ego-driven, stagnant, self-aggrandizing and delusional. And oh, did I mention a monotonous circus? There is all this nonsense of Karachi vs Lahore with dueling participants that include photographers, designers, models and now two camps of Fashion Councils. And this is in a Third World country where no Pakistani fashion designer has showed at an important Fashion Week. Admittedly Nilofer Shahid recently held an exhibition beside the work of legendary couturier Cristobal Balenciaga in Paris and has shown in this City of Lights at other prestigious 'specialty' shows; while Rizwan Beyg, Maheen Khan and Sonya Battla have shown together at the Paris Prêt; and Deepak Perwani and Maheen have participated at KL (Kuala Lumpur) Fashion Week. And of course there have been the myriad of designers ranging from Samee, Mistry, Shayainne Malik, and newbies like Nadia Lakdawalla who have traipsed across the border for the slew of predictable 'bridal extravaganzas.'
Meanwhile at the Olympus Fashion Week in New York which highlighted the Spring 2007 Collections of the New York 'fashion industry' at least four Indians or NRIs including Ashish N. Soni ; Sabyasachi; Anand Jon (Jeanisis)and Naeem Khan, (who recently outfitted Beyoncé Knowles for her upcoming 'Dreamgirls' musical) participated.
Fashion is a self conscious, almost egotistical and competitive profession, and designers whether they are in Pakistan, India, the US or Europe, despite avowing 'community' are really in it for themselves: developing their businesses and displaying their own personal artisanship and creativity. Ask Pakistani fashion maverick Nadya Mistry if she believes founding members of Fashion Pakistan, (the Karachi based fashion council), Rizwan Beyg, Maheen Khan and Amir Adnan are true nurturers of fledgling and mid-career fashion designers, who Mistry claims in the recent past have only promoted their own ranks while traveling to prestigious shows in Singapore et al), and she is prone to become unhinged and spew vitriol. In their defense, the aforementioned designers state that when they plan foreign shows they only want to put Pakistan's 'best fashion face' forward; meaning inadvertently that they only deem their own work of international quality. And that only they deserve the sponsored get-away. This elitist stance is also apparently the impetus for any designers' participation at the Karachi Fashion Week, according to Fashion Pakistan buzz. Good luck to any neophyte designer!
It is imperative that the Government of Pakistan; the Export Promotion Bureau; and whichever Fashion Council comes into existence, get involved in trying to develop strong links between fashion designers and industrialists who already have multi-million dollar businesses in apparel exports.
Pakistani fashion designers can only hope to compete in an arena like New York Olympus Fashion Week if they have the support of the abovementioned ministries, especially if and when they attract international buyers who will demand a level of mass production and swift turnover that most Pakistani designers are not familiar with.
Furthermore Pakistani designers must make clothes which travel well, meaning that the garments should have an international appeal and look as relevant and classic in Karachi as they do in New York, Hong Kong or Moscow. Pakistani designers need to develop strong signature stamps and eschew from creating 'costumes' with a surfeit of embroidery. Embroidery can be an important design element but it must be handled with restraint and as embellishment, and should never smother a garment. The efforts of internationalizing the 'shalwar kameez by fashion denizens such as Sheikh Amer Hasan, Rizwan Beyg and Nilofer Shahid have been noteworthy but not ample. Their designs still register as 'exotic' and 'the other.' Nadya Mistry's Sonya Battla's Maheen Khan's and Sadia Mirza's latest fusion collections are more in line to what might be seen at New York Fashion Week (which more than any other fashion week has the most important global fashion buyers attending.) Pakistani designers should be honest and admit they just like showing off (ie: which celebrities they've dressed, where they've shown, where they're opening shop etc) and don't really care about much else or anyone else.

What's it like being a fashion journalist in Pakistan?

(Laughs) Quite pathetic really. Nowadays I'm quite embarrassed to be known as one of "Pakistan's leading fashion journalists" because our so-called industry is undergoing such a maelstrom. I'm afraid of becoming a bit of a joke really. There are some really talented individuals working in "fashion" but somehow they are all undergoing some sort of communal ennui: they are just not that passionate about Pakistani fashion anymore. I can cite photographers Tapu Javeri, Arif Mahmood and Amean Jan, model Iraj and image stylist Nabila to name a few who gain more pleasure from other photographic, artistic or commercial oeuvres than fashion per se.
When I returned from the US for the very first time after witnessing how the fashion media worked in New York I was very interested in trying to share those ideals with the Pakistani fashion industry. I had sat at Oscar de la Renta's show on the Promenade during 1999's New York Fashion Week as part of a well-wrangled internship with Harper's Bazaar. Its editor- in-chief the delightful and fashion crazy Liz 'Blanche' Tilberis was ill and did not attend (she died later that year from ovarian cancer) but I nevertheless got to witness how astutely the magazine's fashion editors chose which outfits from show after show would grace the six coveted fashion editorial pages assigned to them in order for them to create a fashion story after a 'go ahead' from the editor. (Watch 'The Devil Wears Prada' a roman à clef about the writer's experience working with American Vogue's Anna Wintour to get an idea.) However in Pakistan I was met with all types of opposition and criticism: 'Who did I think I was?' 'What did I know about fashion,' (and at that, Pakistani fashion?) 'Why didn't I have a degree in fashion journalism?' And the clincher: 'It was too late for me to work at Vogue.
I soldiered on despite these hurdles because fashion writing, however frivolous it seemed, is what I had decided to do, never mind the naysayers, reminding myself that many leading fashion designers both in Pakistan and abroad had trained as business students, architects, doctors etc ( Adnan, Perwani, Beyg and the late American couturier Bill Blass.) Sometimes I myself become manic and egotistical and wonder why I even bother reporting on fashion in Pakistan when fashionistas deride my efforts and ask about my fashion degree. In response to this apparent lacking on my part, even if I was to complete the 15 month MA in Fashion Journalism offered by the London College of Fashion or a similar program offered by the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, I would no doubt be taught about Charles Frederick Worth, Ossie Clark, godets, crinolines, broderie anglaise and eyelets (chikan) and seasonal trend writing, none of which is relevant or pertinent to Pakistani fashion. It is wonderful that Pakistani fashion has introduced its own vocabulary of 'Dhaka pajamas' chunri, dabka, zardosi, three quarter sleeves (as opposed to cap sleeves) etc and it is the Pakistani fashion writer's job to discern and report upon these terms. I hope I have done justice to my chosen oeuvre. I take mild offence to being called a fashion critic (Mohsin Sayeed's domain); it sounds too Elizabethan and dour. Fashion journalist is also a bit of a misnomer because although I have an interest in fashion's history, impact and social and political relevance I feel that someone like Amina Haider Isani does that type of reporting much better. I like to be called a 'fashion writer'. I report what I see. I describe the physicality and visuals of fashion and its influences. I like to interpret, explicate speculate and try to avoid being an advertorial for the designer. Fashion is a lot of things—fashion is sociology, fashion is anthropology, fashion is history and fashion can be, although it's easy to exaggerate, indicative of the way people are responding to the world around them at a given time. To be a good fashion journalist one needs what a lot of journalists might not have and that's a healthy respect for the industry.
The puffy impression that much fashion writing creates may be because the main way criticism is practised is by omission; if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Many magazines do this (or don't) for fear of advertisers or designers but it may be that magazines have limited editorial space and they want to tell readers about what's new and what's good. Why tell her about something and say it's terrible? I'd offer another explanation for the nice-or-nothing approach. It's difficult to do when you're talking about young people starting out, particularly when you have just hobnobbed with them in Karachi's limited social scene. You could devastate somebody, and I think that's not nice. I always figured the cruelest thing I could do to anybody is to go to their show and then not write about it.
So to reiterate, there are three types of fashion writers: Firstly those who have a knowledge and history of fashion and write about what's going on, writing that reflects an extensive knowledge of the history of fashion along with an intellectual, yet unpretentious, view of its importance; secondly those who ask why, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, pink is hot. Why is pink hot? Who cares if pink is hot? Who's wearing pink? Or, let's took at the social impact of pink;" and thirdly are the Who's-wearing-What writers. They include the many compilers of best- and worst-dressed lists. I personally like to mix all of these categories up and give it my fair shot.

 

The Future of Pakistani Fashion?
I wish I was a soothsayer and could predict the future of Pakistan's still fledgling fashion scene.
Lux Style Awards (LSA) will continue to make lots of money for its creative director Freiha Altaf who will also continue to rake in lots of moolah because of her monopoly on prestigious shows including Lux's Carnivale de Couture. Despite the Olympian efforts of Lever Brother's Fareshteh Gaiti Aslam, to create as fair and transparent a platform, fashion industrywallahs will continue to berate LSA and accuse it of nepotism and unfair tactics. Imran Kureishi will continue to whine meanwhile perfecting the 'Paris/Milan catwalk but will also have his share of high-profile shows. Designers of various ilks will traipse to India, New York and other ex-pat populated US cities and sell their wares. Some designer will "score big" by dressing some international celebrity or dignitary and the world will never hear the end of it. In fact the designer may forever base the rest of his career upon this feat. Our veteran models will continue to catwalk and do editorial and campaigns insisting that if they are offered work why not take it: ( erm.. how about maintaining dignity, encroaching wrinkles, and global ennui?) A Fashion Week may take place in December, or March or May and perhaps the two fashion councils may miraculously reconcile. Freiha Altaf will make more money. And the fashion circus will continue.

*(A legit fashion industry usually comprises an unified and functioning fashion council; annual fashion weeks twice a year, designers showing four collections Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter each year; professional unbiased designers, exclusively fashion photographers, trained hair and make up artists, modeling agencies where models work with everyone; wardrobe stylists; a myriad of quality fashion magazines; foreign buyers: an unified front)