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FIRST PERSON: The trendsetter
One of the sad things to have happened to fashion in Pakistan is that everyone associated with the industry has been lumped together — from designers to the veranda tailor to the housewife who has tailors and sells clothes abroad. Here lies the great tragedy. These are not designers. A fashion designer is not just one who has great style — he or she has to have consistently designed for at least 15 years and have been on a path where they have been able to design for all ages. While training is important, it doesn’t necessarily make one a designer. Take Coco Chanel. Or Karl Lagerfeld. And at home, Maheen Khan.
Maheen can be called the matriarch of Pakistani fashion. But does she think she’s haute couture?
“We don’t have haute couture in this country. We have couture yes, but not haute couture,” she says. “We love to pretend that we’re flying high and are up there but we’re not. Let’s get down to earth.”
It’s only in Pakistan where people tend to associate fashion with glamour. Everywhere else in the world, haute couture is an industry, not just of garments but accessories like perfumes, cosmetics, jewellry, handbags etc. Maheen doesn’t believe we have the market nor the women who have that heightened sense of style to carry off haute couture. If designers can present good couture and remain consistent in doing so, half the battle is won.
‘A cut is a very passe term. A master can give you a good cut. By the time you reach the status of being a designer you don’t have time to do your own drafting so let’s just stop talking about cuts’
In an industry that is still relatively young in the country, how can couture take off when there is a huge tailoring market catering to imitations? Many of us are guilty of taking along a copy of a fashion magazine to Kehkashan market to get a cheap knock-off made, but let’s face it, it is a cheap knock off and Maheen agrees. “Those are bad copies,” she says. The parallel “knock off” market ends up ruining a couture designer’s market — not to mention their own — because the copy is as Maheen says, “so pathetic.” Incidentally Maheen left her original studio in Clifton (lest one forgets, hers was the first) because she couldn’t take the imitations surrounding her.
“The boutiques (in the vicinity) were copying me constantly. This one particular lady had the gall to buy an outfit from me and then had it modelled by herself in a magazine. I couldn’t believe it. I even went to one of the boutiques and said, if you want to copy me, copy me right.”
Maheen closed her boutique but didn’t shut down as a designer. In fact, she worked more and had more showings abroad. During this period, she also built up a younger clientele. Today she has her own studio in Karachi’s Tauheed commercial area. She’s even installed an entry phone system to keep imitators away. “They will think twice before coming here.” The studio itself has an air of privacy to it, a deliberate attempt because Maheen believes that no client wants to have passersby looking into the store when they are buying clothes.
For the last two months, she has been working on a diffusion line — clothes for all occasions, i.e. casual wear, parties, weddings — all of which are priced under Rs6,000. She’s priced it as such to keep up with the market demands. And Maheen isn’t worried that with a sudden drop in prices (even if it is under the aegis of another label, M) her couture will suffer. She will show her couture collection twice a year, for which she will be taking orders. It’s a simple, straightforward plan.
And that’s what people have come to expect from the designer: simplicity, elegance, style. At a time when the word d’jour is ‘cuts’, Maheen laughs at our inability to understand the term.
“All I hear these days is that so and so has a good cut. A cut is a very passe term. A master can give you a good cut. By the time you reach the status of being a designer you don’t have time to do your own drafting so let’s just stop talking about cuts.”
Fashion, she says, is more about a design philosophy and not cuts. In plain speak: it’s not a cut that makes a design. A good design has to have a good cut but there’s much more in the designer’s philosophy and creativity that makes the outfit.
As far as innovations go, there is no denying that Maheen is a trendsetter. She revived the angharka in the 80s, focussed on tailored shirts in the same decade, designed the half sari in the 90s and taught us to wear pants under our kameezes. Our love for chiffon can also be attributed to her — it’s a fabric she’s enamoured with.
“I’m a fighter when it comes to changing trends,” she says. “I love challenges.” Maheen’s new crusade of sorts is against the run of the mill three-piece shalwar kameez. Six months ago she introduced separates into her collection.
“Treat your entire jora as three separate ensembles. Hang them up in your cupboard separately. If you’ve got six outfits in the cupboard, you automatically have 12 at least. We should see our clothes as an investment. We need to be wise about our clothes.” It’s been hard getting people to buy her ideas but she’s not going to give up on them. Her philosophy on clothes is also simple: be comfortable in what you wear. There’s truth to you are what you wear.
And Pakistani women, by and large, are the most elegant, a sentiment Maheen shares.
“This is primarily because our fashions are not based on our film industry.” She witnessed this at Bridal Asia, a fashion show recently held in India where Maheen participated. The various Indian designers exhibited what can only be described as “ghagra-choli, ghagra-choli and more ghaghra-choli” whereas one could tell with Maheen’s clothes that there was a thought process behind her simple yet elegant collection.
This doesn’t translate into Maheen churning out clothes by the dozen or re-hashing outfits on clients’ whims. She is known for her bluntness. She’s told brides-to-be off for their posture. She’s refused to make outfits for clients because she knows it won’t suit them. And she laughs when she says that she has also told clients to lose extra pounds. Maheen’s clients won’t be coming to her for bridal wear — they’re coming for good, well tailored clothes. And fashion is for everyone, and every size.
“I may tell someone to lose some weight but the joy one gets from seeing a client happy in my clothes is great.”
As a designer with a clear design philosophy surrounding her persona, one can’t help but ask her to comment on the industry today. She is a keen exponent of building up a strong local industry without which one cannot talk of exporting products. The designer is harsh about graduating students from fashion schools, who she attributes as having too large an ego at such a young age.
“They’ve only just qualified and they see themselves as designers. You can get all the training you want but that doesn’t automatically make you a designer. That comes much later.”
Initially Maheen was very supportive of students, even employing some herself but will not be doing so in the future because of bad experiences.
“I can’t cope with egos,” she says flatly. “There was a sense of unity amongst designers before these students came out.”
However, this is not to say that she is un-supportive of fashion schools. That, she feels, is a must if the industry is to go anywhere.
Of her current collection, Maheen is quick to point out that she has parallel lines running. Her classic collection will continue i.e, classic kurta with a classic achkan and shalwar or trouser. She has a younger collection, known as M line, which is trendy, figure hugging and cheap. She has an evening collection which features her favourite fabric, chiffon. Finally, she has a lot of western clothes; trousers and blouses. She never says never to anything so one can always expect to see innovations from her.
Maheen makes it a point to pay tribute to her team, without whom she says she is nothing. Her master Afzal “joined me when he was nine and now has three children. He is illiterate but he designs with me; that’s how brilliant he is. I’ve got workers and a team that I’ve built up over the years who are very important to me.”
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