Sunday, 10 May, 2009
It was on the day of the sectarian violence in Karachi that the Ponds Ensemble Spring Summer 2009 show for the benefit of The Teachers Resource Centre was held. I made my way to the event with mixed feelings: on the one hand excited about what the event had to offer — a show by fashion giants Iman Ahmed and Rizwan Beyg as well as the likes of the ever-popular Kamiar Rokni, Maheen Karim and Sadaf Malaterre... and a concert by Atif Aslam — and on the other hand feeling a sense of guilt that another part of the city was in turmoil and here I was out to have a good time.
But a lot had gone into making the event happen; a lot of individuals had channeled time, money, effort and creativity into it, and bear in mind that it was all for a good cause.
There is one thing the fashion industry works hard at selling and that is for the viewer/wearer to live a glamorous, beautiful fantasy. I entered this bubble the fashion world exists in from the moment I entered the venue of the event. Most of what was happening in the ‘real world’ was conveniently forgotten, except for when the host of the evening expressed her regrets at the violence that had rocked Karachi earlier that day resulting in the loss of lives.
Iman Ahmed of the Body Focus Museum opened the show with panache and style. She maintains an incredibly low social profile and yet is one of the most gifted and creative designers we have in the industry. With her models not walking but flowing on the catwalk, she opened the show with a black number with a slightly printed off-white neck, perhaps sent to throw-off the attendees with what to expect.
Her Spring Summer 2009 collection seemed to predominantly be an extension of printed creme, white and black layered, triangular-bottomed dresses that she showed last year in August at the launch of a local fashion channel.
In a similar manner (and print), her models began by sporting flowing garments in deep red which eventually shifted to blue. There were a lot of multi-colored prints on black and white with models wearing long, loose pajamas under the dresses. In particular there was a long white coat with the printed section lining the inside rather than the outside that caught my eye.
Sadaf Malaterre is not new to the industry, but as a designer she is. If anything, in a short while she’s displayed a delightful love for vibrant colors, even though some of her designs seem heavily ‘influenced’. Her color palette ranged from vibrant pink, turquoise, green, yellow, orange, black, white and what not.
Fayezah Ansari opened the collection with a stunning black and white number which I officially dub as a ‘coral’ dress. It was a simple short dress in black fabric with creme-coloured circular attachments giving a coral-like look.
The pink and purple dress sported by Fauzia on the catwalk was gorgeous, layered in the manner of the orange dress shown by Adnan Pardesy at the Karachi Fashion Week, but given a definite soft touch, it screamed of youthful femininity. The saris, which were a bright shade of red, orange and black-and-white print, cried out of an ’80s influence in colour and print. Put together, somehow it didn’t seem to work. Also spotted was a tacky short orange dress which invited audible gasps of horror from those who were sitting all around me.
Overall Sadaf’s collection was a hit and miss. Where there were some truly beautiful pieces, others made one absolutely cringe. There was also a definite lack of consistency in thought, idea or concept holding the entire collection together — a feature which was quickly apparent in the collections shown by relatively newer designers (Kamiar Rokni and Maheen Karim), especially in comparison to the mature designers — Iman Ahmed and Rizwan Beyg.
Kamiar Rokni showed his Bhawalpur-inspired collection next. This designer has a quirky, very ’70s sense of style, especially in the manner in which he cuts his pants (reminds one of bell-bottoms) underneath his straight, slit-less shirts. I can almost imagine an Edie Sedwick carrying them off with her playful elegance.
His kurtas were longer, with an A-line cut, lined with ‘gota’ going along with printed pants. An off-shoulder pink ‘sharara’ in the more formal segment caught my eye. Local designers often parrot the term ‘eastern design with western sensibility’ implying a ‘fusion’ of the two cultures in their designs when, at a closer look, there really is none. Kamiar Rokni with this outfit managed to do exactly that — an eastern design with a western sensibility — but with a definite style.
When one thinks of the kind of woman Maheen Karim designs for, who was the designer showing after Kamiar Rokni, one thinks of high-society gentility. A graduate from the St Martin’s School of Design, London, her dresses don’t carry any ‘eastern sensibility’ but do carry her signature cut and look and have a very good finish to them. She arrived with a bang, but hasn’t advanced much from her original designs or cuts. It’s now time that she stops playing it safe and creates something newer than what we are used to seeing from her.
With a definite love for gold bling, and with the designer on occasion confessing to being inspired by Parveen Babi, some of her collection had been viewed previously at the Labels Spring Summer 2009 launch, where she currently stocks. The short gold-sequined dress seemed like an extension of the golden robe dress she had as a part of her Spring Summer collection in 2007.
The blue-grey dress that Fayezah opened with seemed like an extension of the yellow dress that Maheen had shown at a show held at Karachi’s Marriott Hotel in September 2008. In this collection she showed a lot of beige creations as well. Single-toned, bold and encrusted with diamantes, some attendees likened one of the dresses as being similar to the collection showed by Sana Safinaz at the Ensemble in November 2008. Methinks the beige also looked like an extension of the series that the yellow and the blue-grey outfit could have been a part of.
Maheen Karim showed a black and creme sari which was her first foray into eastern wear, and which displayed her customary elegance. However, there was a yellow and black printed dress that looked heavily inspired by Iman Ahmed’s collection that Iman showed in August 2008. It was given a Maheen Karim twist by a gold bodice, but otherwise was almost the same.
The biggest no-no in all her collection was a black and then a separate red, fully-sequined catsuit-meets-churidar pajama-meets-’80s Bollywood ‘Disco Dancer’ ensemble that made jaws drop in its sheer tackiness. One really wanted to know — after coming up with otherwise graceful creations — what went seriously wrong here with Maheen Karim’s design sense? The jewellery for the segment was provided by Shehrzad Rahimtoola.
Rizwan Beyg is a designer who seems to create just to make statements. His models arrived dressed in full-white and wide-brimmed hats, fantastically evocative of an 18th century sensibility brought to the modern era, in a style that was a cross between his memorable collection at the TRC show in 2006 and his latest fascination with the Egyptian mummy-inspired dressing. Each outfit was carefully put together and the models seemed to have fun on the catwalk. Details in the styling — from the shoes to the shoulder-less sleeves — were well taken care of. None of it was very wearable, but then again most work of art within fashion isn’t. And perhaps that was also not the objective.
Towards the end of the show, when one thought it was over, on to the catwalk hopped a woman who, on closer look I discovered was Hadiqa Kiyani. Also sporting a Rizwan Beyg ensemble, and while Atif Aslam made his appearance at the other end of the catwalk belting out a popular number (his performance officially having started), she pranced up and down the ramp before disappearing altogether. At that point, while the guests moved towards the ramp to enjoy the performance, I quietly made my way out of the fashion bubble where everything was beautiful and everyone was happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment