In a conversation with Instep, designer Mohsin Naveed Ranjha, loosely paraphrased, said that in Pakistan, design houses are struggling to maintain their businesses, so the fashion aspect of the ‘business of fashion’ may often be neglected.
Of course, no one can blame any design house, or business, to try and stay in business in this economy.
The Covid vaccine may have taken care of the worst of the virus, but sadly it cannot address the very sick global economy, and the even worse, if possible, Pakistani economy.
That said, the one thing we have loved over the course of the last year is younger designers sticking to their dreams and just making fashion on whatever scale they can. Sifur by Sania, whose philosophy is to create sustainable fashion, only puts out about three pieces per season. Other indie labels - Deen & Keenu, Minutiae, Sara Wassan Designs come to mind - have fewer designs than the smallest pret label, introduced sporadically.
But the grand scheme of fashion cannot be furthered if labels, big or small, work in isolation. The one design house releasing collections and showing regularly is House of Parishae. Helmed by Parishae Adnan, the label has a very strong ethos and aesthetic that they stick to with every collection, and each show has also been more theatrical than most. This isn’t at all because the designer is trying to wrap a weak product in shiny packaging; on the contrary, it seems she cannot contain all her ideas within one physical collection, and must let them spill into the showcase. What the standalone shows do remind us is that the Pakistan fashion industry itself is positively overflowing with the most promising new designers, who don’t all have the resources or discipline to pull together a show. We need a fashion council to organize the industry a bit, and then let the young guns take the reins, which we believe they are more than capable of doing.