FPW Day 1 was about making big bucks, not fashion statements
There are fashion shows and there are fashion catalogues. And when the former resembles the latter, the clothes aren’t usually groundbreaking.
I returned from the first day of the ‘Winter Festive’ edition of Fashion Pakistan Week (FPW) feeling as if I had just viewed a two-hour long catalog. There were clothes that were pretty, plenty had the potential to sell well but in a week or so, I wouldn’t be able to remember most of the designs.
Where were the new trends, the innovations in silhouette, craft, palette? Not on the catwalk, predominantly.
Blame for this primarily lies on the curious balance that has to be struck by a designer aiming to appease the subcontinental bride and all the family and friends planning to attend her wedding. Classically pretty, traditional clothes are in massive demand while very few people want to spend on a cutting edge – albeit beautifully embellished – design.
The bride, groom and their respective retinues often look at the latest fashion week and decide upon what they want to wear to the wedding. Consequently, there is a subliminal understanding that ‘Winter Festive’ for Pakistan is merely a fancy name for a bridal-wear overdose and that’s what designers tend to show on the catwalk – clothes that they know will sell well.
But this defies the purpose behind fashion week. If it isn’t trendsetting, if it doesn’t offer anything distinctive in terms of embellishment, pattern or colour, then it doesn’t belong on the runway. The designer may as well just have created a spectacular catalogue, advertised it via the far reaches of social media and hauled in the clientele. Why bother with fashion week at all?
On the upside, the FPW catwalk was an immaculate, shiny, marble white, with Grecian pillars in the backdrop. Nubain Ali acted as choreographer and team Nabila adeptly churned out bridal looks backstage. A bonanza of celebrities were on the runway as showstoppers, ensuring that the shows got plenty of hype on social media’s starstruck realms: Kubra Khan for Aamna Aqeel, Imran Abbas and Sana Javed for Lajwanti, Noor Khan and Sarah Khan for Huma Adnan and Junaid Khan and Bilal Ashraf for HSY. Additionally, Sheema Kirmani introduced the Pink Tree Company’s collection.
As for the fashion, ‘safe’ would be a good way to describe them; some of the collections were safe but very good, some safe but not so good but none were abysmally bad. Perhaps we could be optimistic and say that the glass was half full?