Fashionistas Not Revolutionaries

Lahore Fashion Week has brought Pakistan Fashion Debate back in international media.  

The first piece is from  CNN:

Lahore, Pakistan (CNN) — Bare backs, plunging necklines and high-cut hems. Western media recently reported that the bold statements made by Pakistan’s fashionistas at Lahore Fashion Week demonstrated how designers were rejecting conservative dress in the South Asian nation.

But the country’s top designers and models say that last week’s four-day fashion extravaganza wasn’t about defying extremism.

“I won’t go as far as to say that this was defiance of anything,” designer Kamiar Rokni told CNN backstage after his collection was shown. “That’s what the Western world sees because that’s what is news. But we’re making fashion news.”

Karachi may have stolen Lahore’s thunder by launching the country’s first fashion week last November but Lahore is considered Pakistan’s cultural capital and is home to the Pakistan Institute of Fashion Design. It meant that Lahore Fashion Week became a sort of homecoming for many of the country’s premier designers who started in the city.

“It’s an extremely important, momentous show, not just for myself, but for everybody,” said Rokni, “because the Pakistan Fashion Design Council has been at it for five years and we’ve finally had our first fashion week.”

Vazeena Ahmed, who at age 37 is one of Pakistan’s oldest and most sought after models, said Pakistan had “trained designers now. Before there were just bored housewives with nothing else to do.”