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The image of a silken strand of hair weaving through a needle said it all: Nabila’s hair show for L’Oreal Paris titled Somptueux (which translates to lavish and plump in French) would interlace fashion with beauty.
Sure enough, the show drew an analogy between couture and hair that is just as opulent and indulgent. Hair trends envisioned chocolate brown, magenta red and blonde as colours for summer 2012 and costumes, designed impeccably by Zaheer Abbas stuck to the same palette while dressing three pairs of two-headed models. They were two-headed, joint at the hip like Siamese twins and alluding to a split personality, a dark and mysterious side. It almost hinted as beauty as the flip side of fashion or vice versa.
Embellished by live music courtesy E-mix featuring Ustad Nafees Ahmed, Alycia Dias and Shallum Xavier, Somptueux was an appropriately delicious treat for the senses.A fashion atelier was conceptualised within the courtyards of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi and artisans (students) were placed to show different stages of garment construction.
They simultaneously revealed how the same techniques of dying, cutting, weaving and texturing applied to hair when it was treated with just as much attention. One student was dying thread along with hair extensions, while one sitting in front of a loom wove yarn just as another was braiding hair. The school pond was furnished with sculpted busts and an elaborate Victorian gown was framed within a derelict elevator, suspended for impact.
Nabila’s strength is and has been to go that extra mile to introduce innovative and often, shocking concepts. While the conventional may reject her ideas as unacceptable and often garish, these are ideas that push the creative envelop and must be encouraged to help take the industry forward. Fashion, in its truest form must make unapologetic statements, and that’s what this show did.
A live band serenaded the audience as the two-headed models (two girls in one costume each) laboured their way down to the stage. Not an easy task as their costumes were no less a challenge than the elaborate hairdos they sported. And their heels were high. The finale saw Iraj saunter in and perform a mime as Nabila came on stage and snipped off her hair. A passage of rites?
The show did edge towards the uncomfortable for many, after all an image of Siamese twins dressed in human hair hardly makes for a bedtime story. But conceptually it made its mark, as would a Jean Paul Gaultier advertisement or a savage Alexander McQueen installation. It was a bit macabre in its setting — the water-logged heads, tiny caged mannequins and then the hair-snipping ritual — but had a grim, fairy tale-like quality that leaned towards Tim Burton rather than Hans Christian Andersen. For fans of the dark, which one believes most of the youth to be, this setting was idyllic in its inspirations.
We talk about dark horses and black sheep but one would label Nabila as fashion’s black swan, someone who likes to indulge in the unexplored.
