STYLE: The Keys to Bridal Couture Week’s Success … and Failure
If fashion is a creative expression of art then bridal fashion is its most extravagant form. It’s also the most lucrative which is why, ironically, wedding-wear is often not real fashion. The allusions to artistry simply get replaced by commercial concerns. The Hum Network’s Bridal Couture Week (BCW) omnibus, then, is an exhibition space facilitating the commerce of local bridal-wear. Herein lies the key to BCW’s success as well as its failing.
BCW is now in its 14th edition — mouthfully titled QMobile Hum Bridal Couture Week (QHBCW) this time around — and no one can deny its prowess as a very successful exhibit space. Designers swear by the business they get from the mileage generated by the event. The network stays fixatedly true to its calendar, staging BCW twice a year — once, in the Spring/Summer and then, again, in Autumn/Winter. The show is then broadcast constantly, touted as a ‘special,’ viewed by a large wedding-bound audience within Pakistan as well as abroad, wherever the network is aired.
Further hyping the event is the presence of umpteen celebrity showstoppers. Many of them are actors that are being seen in the Hum Network’s ongoing slew of TV dramas and considering the avid fan followings these enjoy, BCW easily ends up ‘trending’ on social media. A bi-annual BCW catalogue is also released on to bookstands. Marketing can’t get more persuasive than that.
Fashion takes a backseat to business at an event dedicated to bridal-wear
Where’s the fashion?