Dawn Images

Designer Zara Shahjahan might hail from Lahore, but she has embraced the ebb and flow of Karachi. As she prepares to open a new store for her eponymous clothing line, Zara Shahjahan, in the city by the sea, she writes a heartwarming tribute to Karachi.

“I have always loved cities that are restless, cities that never truly sleep, cities that carry the weight of too many stories and wear them like a second skin. Karachi is that city,” she penned on Instagram.

With a series of pictures from the city, the designer wrote that Karachi was not soft nor carefully arranged like a garden in bloom. Rather, it was “wild and electric, unpredictable like the sea that watches over it.

“It is a city that does not wait for you to understand it — you either dive in or step aside.”

Shahjahan has decided to step into Karachi, embracing all its beauty and chaos. “I come from Lahore, where history is pressed into the walls, where the past lingers in the scent of rain on old brick. Lahore is nostalgia, poetry, a place that holds you like an old song. But Karachi — Karachi is motion. It is wind against your face, salt in your hair, the sound of a thousand footsteps marching forward without looking back.”

With her new store, the designer hopes to bring something of Lahore into the heart of Karachi, a piece of her world stitched into the fabric of Pakistan’s largest city.

“Not to tame it, not to soften it, but to become a part of its pulse. Because Karachi wears its defiance beautifully, and fashion here is not just about cloth — it is about movement, about identity, about the way the city holds itself together despite everything.”

Shahjahan detailed that she never felt unwelcome in Karachi, she only felt the wind pull her forward and the streets open their arms to her and “the city whisper, ‘If you are here, then belong’.

“And so I do. Welcome to our new store.”

Currently, Shahjahan has two stores in Karachi and two in Lahore. The designer has not revealed the location of her latest branch yet.