With a plumage of bright, entrancing colours and a flight aiming for the stars, fashion weeks in Pakistan have certainly taken off. Yes, they may occasionally dilly-dally, dip and dive through inevitable lows but slowly and surely, fashion’s gilded wings are spreading wide.

Case in point: the recent Fashion Pakistan Week (FPW), touted as the Autumn/Winter edition although the tail-end of November hardly warrants as autumnal.

Crisp, well-orchestrated and replete with fabulous fashion, FPW could have spelt out great business for designers in the winter wedding and party season, had it taken place at its hitherto scheduled October time-slot. It’s still passed the litmus test for a successful fashion week: creating waves and generating orders, for FPW was certainly Karachi’s best foot forward.  And I mean that literally, for only Faraz Mannan chose to participate from amongst Lahore’s fashion fraternity.

Five years down the line, the Fashion Pakistan council put up one heck of a show!

The FPW runway spun high fashion dreams but there were so many more feathers in its cap. The Maybelline New York Millennial fashion show, a precursor to FPW itself, provided a platform for five upcoming designers and consequently spotlighted the very promising Madiha Raza, who will now be part of next year’s Spring/Summer fashion week.

For the three-day FPW, Nabila’s N-Pro team put their all into the styling, improvising from wind-blown tresses to fashionably messy updos to theatrical drama that makes fashion week so much fun: smatterings of diamantes stuck beneath the eyes, long silk thread ponies and blonde fringes that extended over the eyes. It would have been better if certain ostensibly short models could have been eliminated from the show but still, aided by the meticulous styling and the sheer energy brought in by choreographer HSY, the catwalk remained riveting.

Every now and then, celebrity showstoppers made appearances: Adnan Siddiqui for Levi’s, Ayesha Omer for her favourite Shehla Chatoor, Adnan Malik and Sikander ‘Xander’ Rizvi for Deepak Perwani and three of Pakistan’s earliest bona fide models, Frieha Altaf, Iraj and Atiya Khan as part of the finale by Maheen Khan. Social media, veritably, buzzed. For better or for worse; Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have become successful vehicles for generating hype for fashion.

Notwithstanding the confusion for front-row seats where media personnel searched aimlessly for their allotted places, the front rows were packed with Karachi’s glitterati including from a newly married Sarwat Gilani and Fahad Mirza, Anita Ayub and Zeba Bakhtiar, TDAP Secretary Rabiya Javeri and Ghinwa Bhutto, who came for Maheen Khan’s finale on the last day.

Far from the general hoi polloi, it is the well-coiffured, elite crowd at fashion weeks that gives them their exclusivity. FPW held its own — something that many events have been unable to do lately with sponsors’ foisting in their guest-lists — and from the very savvy Toni & Guy Hair Meet Fashion lounge to the catwalk, fashion’s veneer never waned …

Razzle, dazzle and some good ol’ band baaja.

What better way to start off fashion week than with some true blue Bollywood band baaja? The Ather Hafiz for Sana Safinaz show, inspired by Karachi’s French Beach, opened with a literal blare of trumpets, bursts of tropical psychedelia and flirty insouciant sartorial statements. Quite in contrast was 50 Shades Deep, the Mohsin Ali for Sana Safinaz show on the third day, with its surreal wild palette, wintry silhouettes and use of luxe velvets, silks and leather.

It will be interesting to see how both lines are translated into the Sana Safinaz stores, whether they’ll retain their catwalk magic or trundle down the familiar route to a range of mundane, far-too-safe tunics.

Ayesha Farook Hashwani, meanwhile, spearheaded retail-friendly glamour in a line that’s bound to become a sensation. Sadaf Malaterre also stayed true to her quintessential boho-glamour with her easy-breezy monochromatic Contradictions. Sadaf’s been known for her radical arty streaks and it was not as much fun seeing her toe safer lines. Her strong eye for fashion, still, brought in the accolades.

Maheen Karim did what she does best — cutting and molding ball gowns like it’s nobody’s business, dabbling with the ease of a pro into draped long gowns, voluminous hems, pleats and backless numbers criss-crossed with embroidery. Her Ravissant was one of the most glamorous, well-constructed collections at FPW and one can see it becoming a big hit with her regular overseas clientele.

Other labels yo-yoed between hits and misses. Faraz Manan had some interesting embellish­me­nts up his sleeve but Nida Azwer, with her well-recognised forte in creating Eastern silhouettes, especially disappointed. The designer chose to try out Wes­tern fusion and brought forth a smattering of pretty saris and tunics. There was, however, none of the craftsmanship that one has come to admire in her line-ups.

Perhaps the most powerful collection was by Maheen Khan — not because of its masterful finishing and flair but because it was the House of Maheen’s fashion week swan song. Teary-eyed, the designer ended an era of runway shows for her luxury brand although she does promise to continue with her Gulabo shows and dives headlong into creating her Virsa line using fabric woven by silk weavers in Karachi’s Banaras Colony and Orangi Town localities.

A salute to menswear

The oft-ignored realm of menswear got tweaked, twisted, suited and booted for designer Deepak Perwani’s Everything but the Girl. From austere, well-cut suits to jodhpurs, blazers and tongue-in-cheek shirts, Deepak’s smorgasbord was insouciant, diverse and very interesting. At the other end of the spectrum was Nauman Arfeen’s Royal Parade which may have had nothing particularly new to offer but pandered successfully to the designer’s market for well-fit, Eastern sherwanis.

A minor crib here against the introductory fashion videos shown by designers prior to the show — while some are truly fun to watch, emulating the brand ethos, there are those that border on the self-congratulatory or are uncomfortably libidinous. First impressions matter and a video preceding a show needs to be well-crafted and true to the brand it precedes.

But moving beyond the runway to drier realistic territory, it remains to be seen how many of FPW’s showcases boil down to business for fashion. With the absence of local buyers — most of our multi-retailers prefer to ‘stock’, returning unsold clothes after a certain term — fashion weeks serve as PR mechanisms and clever designers make sure they cash in on the hype.

Nida Azwer, for instance, plans to stock her Renaissance line in stores within the next two weeks. Maheen Karim started taking orders even prior to her runway outing and Shehla Chatoor made her clutches available for sale right after her show and plans to translate her Misaki into Eastern luxury-pret over the next month. The scintillating Outhouse jewelry, worn in the Mohsin Ali for Sana Safinaz show, was retailed through an exhibition on the weekend following fashion week.

Rabiya Javeri talked about trying to “make a show like this go international” through the TDAP and representatives from different embassies formed the erstwhile foreign contingent that may not be talking business but could prove to bring in international awareness for local aesthetics. The international market, for now, is a much too fantastical target but our fashion weeks, as they get more streamlined, would definitely benefit from the presence of international media, clearly missing this FPW.

For the world — and not just the local audience — should be able to see just how fantastic Pakistani fashion is becoming. At FPW, event organisation became smoother, show-timings were applaudably more punctual and there were many more good collections than bad. Fashion weeks have progressed to become spectacular gargantuan affairs, liken them to a preening peacock or a fiery phoenix, this flight is aiming high. It’s going to be a long ride up to the stars, but it’s going to be an exciting one.

Show choreography: HSY | Hair & make-up: Nabila’s & N-Gents | PR & Media: Latitude CRS | Backstage Management: Production O21

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 7th, 2014