INSTEP Magzine


uk calling Karachi in London As the world becomes a global village, it becomes necessary to network. Pakistan has definitely begun making it's presence felt in the throbbing heart of Britain. This momentum needs to increase. By Fifi Haroon in London



About seven years ago I moved to London from Karachi, leaving some family, a few friends and my deep pool of stagnating waters far behind. In my absence much has changed, and so much more hasn't. Every time I go back to Pakistan, I have to play catch-up to decipher the latest national quandary or the current 15 minutes fad. This usually entails a few solid hours of gossip and television or gossip on television. If nothing else, certainly the channels on my TV need to be re-tuned with alarming regularity. Pakistan, it seems, can't get enough of the box; channels are born daily in sextuplet quantities. I am convinced TV remotes have to be replaced faster in Pakistan than anywhere else in the world. Of course each time my travel to the home country is stalled by a few more months, nostalgia gleefully clouds my vision. In some ways as immigrants to another country you carry your suitcase of memories with you on a forever basis; its contents cleansed and scrubbed by the detergent gaze of hindsight and made rosy by flight miles.

Last week I was missing Pakistan. Or more honestly, Karachi. Because that for me is what my Pakistan is. You know how it is, you can take the girl out of Karachi but you can't take Karachi out of the girl. Others wax lyrical about the splendour of snow capped mountains in the Northern regions and the architectural heights and cultural fruitfulness of Lahore, but for me messy, bustling Karachi, despite being far removed from the rest of the country on so many levels is quintessential Pakistan in several others - persistently tumultuous, living on the edge, and full of smoke and ideas that don't quite take off. So when an idea does, and lands plum in the middle of the Pakistan High Commission in terribly posh Lowndes Square, London, you have got to be quite pleased that the stars were in alignment.

Fashionable togs from Maheen Khan, Deepak Perwani and a stark collection of black and white Pakistan from normally fashionable Tapu Javeri headlined High Commissioner Maliha Lodhi's official swan song at the London High Commission. The air was electric, the hostess gracious if rather more conventionally attired than the outfits in the show, and the hall crowded to the point of creating an indoor summer in spring. I soaked it all as like a much needed hot spa bath that was made in Pakistan. If you can't go home, maybe home can come to you. Or at least that's how it felt; this was all familiar territory. Except no Vinny or Iraj or ZQ, but a line up of Brit Asian faces from Sadia and Hajra's desi modelling agency, Caramel. "Pity we couldn't get Kate Moss though she lives in London," quipped Tapu Javeri, "but at least the girls were energetic and carried off the clothes."

"The clothes" of course caused quite a stir. Generously built aunties gasped audibly as Deepak Perwani's Dilosophy collection made its backless presence felt on the catwalk. This isn't the first time Deepak has shown this collection in London; but seeing the flashy, in-your-face ensembles up close on an eye-level catwalk is quite different from seeing it in miniature on a stage in Trafalgar square. Of course Deepak also plumped for some restrained outfits, but his Dastarkhan inspired collection was so much more fun that the rest of it got a bit overlooked. Deepak, never reticent about anything was openly buzzed by his own success. "People loved the clothes!" The Dilosophy collection is all about colour - and we all need it so badly in our lives. It's my way of exploring my Sindhi roots. Not to forget the fact that making it gave 200 women in the interior of Sindh a livelihood." These 200 women would probably have had a coronary or two seeing the tiny bustiers and skirts their work has morphed into, but Deepak's idea of taking something kitsch and making it into young, vibrant high fashion is right on track. Maheen Khan's collection was all about wearability. She was queen of the tailored suit long before Hillary Clinton made its Western equivalent a fashion statement, but Maheen now thinks the way forward - at least for the Pakistani designer eyeing the London market - is a collection of separates. "People in London don't wear a designer, they create their own original look from what they put together with pieces from different designers. In Pakistan you're one designer from top to toe - there isn't any room to invent your own style. I tried promoting the whole separates idea in Pakistan about ten years ago and then gave up - people just didn't understand it."

Keeping in mind that the idea may get more coinage here, Maheen came armed to the British capital with delicate chiffon kurtis and stoles, which would go well with with anything from jeans to something more formal. "Even though I had some shalwar kameezes for my regular clientele I decided not to target just the Asians. Since we were selling our stuff after the show at a Notting Hill boutique there was a degree of passing trade too. To see Spanish girls and English girls walking in and buying our clothes was such a high!" Another plus was a passing stylist from the Daily Mail spotting one of Deepak's funky mirror-worked bag in the shop window and wanting to use it for a fashion editorial. "just being on any street of any shopping area of London exposes your work to all kinds of attention," emphasizes Maheen. "It's a different ball game when you're in a shop and have a window to dress. It made me realise we should have done this long ago. But see, no one Pakistani designer can sustain a shop in London - so it is important to get the support of all the designers. I think this is the way to go. It would be a great learning curve for even the young designers. It would be such a waste not to continue it. We should keep going back with new designs and designers. But there is a lot of work to be done - it's a serious business."

I get Maheen's point. Individual designers in Pakistan may or may not have the clout of someone like Abu Jani who has long had an outlet in Knightsbridge, but to start off an array of different designers pooling in to launch one shop could be a feasible project. Sharing the space would dilute the cost and earmark the venue as a hub for anyone searching for distinctive, if not Pakistani fashion. And choosing a mainstream location would allow for a style crossover, as would designs that wouldn't be lost in translation. Maheen also feels that the designers have to be more realistic with their pricing. "Things have changed. Fashion now has become totally disposable - you buy it, wear it a few times and chuck it. Or you wear it for a season - no one wants to be seen in anything more than one season anymore." Certainly, reasonably priced off-the-peg would work better in a market where Pakistani designers have yet to establish themselves as a solid force. The idea would be to pull in mainstream buyers with something distinctive that doesn't quite look like most other high street names. Many mainstream boutiques like Monsoon and East use Indian fabrics and embroidery extensively and in such a saturated market brand differentiation is crucial. "I have always said, you have to raise the bar in design not in embellishment," contends Maheen. She is right - but to a point. Something like Deepak's Dilosophy collection for example is heavily embellished but works because it is funky and statement making rather than the usual pretty, summery look that defines "Indian" in the British high street. Certainly the pull to go mainstream internationally rather than limiting oneself to the ethnic market is one that needs to be encouraged. You can go for the Pakistani piece of the global pie or go the largest slice the knife can cut. The clothes Maheen Khan and Deepak Perwani brought to London, if priced sensibly in the £100-£300 range, would do well on the high street. People shop differently here; one designer piece can be used to set off a fairly basic ensemble culled from Top Shop and Marks and Sparks. Pakistani designers should aim at providing that one designer piece to millions of people aiming to be fashionably different. But you can't do this in a makeshift shop on Green Street with Sharmila pan house on your left and Lahore Karahiwalla on your right. If you're going to make your mark it should be an indelible one and the right place is crucial to garner passing trade from a wider buying public. We have the products, we just have to learn to market them. Sort of like Pakistani writers have recently been doing.

Which brings me to my other Karachi experience in London a week later. Booker Prize nominated author Mohsin Hamid and literary newbie Mohamed Hanif in conversation with British Asian writer/broadcaster Sarfaraz Manzoor at Asia House about Pakistani identity and how it is expressed in their writing. Well, we didn't really get to the latter part much as the pair were caught up in defending Pakistan and it's history to some people of the audience who didn't quite realize they were authors not politicians. However, if I was looking for Pakistan in London this was as good a place as any for my month of nostalgia. These were real Pakistanis with Pakistani accents and cynical Pakistani tongues, and despite Sarfaraz Man-zouah's (as he says it) best efforts to get them to speak seriously about a "British Asian" identity, were quite sure that they were not quite British Asians but were respectively a Lahorite (Mohsin Hamid) and a Karachite (Mohammed Hanif) in London. That they felt far from British, but did feel they were almost Londoners is familiar self-definition to me. It's sort of like I am. And sort of like London is my Britain. Naturally I was delighted to find such kindred spirits in one go in Asia House. And then there were all the Pakistani Pakistanis in the audience one could
hope for. Moni Mohsin, author and not-so-hidden Diarist/Social Butterfly, Umber Khairi (BBC/Newsline) and her husband Shakaib, who has left his days as a cop behind to become a successful corporate lawyer in the city and journalistic starlwart M.Ziauddin, who has been reporting back from London for years. This was beginning to feel like a homecoming away from home.
It's likely you already know about Mohsin Hamid's extraordinarily successful The Reluctant Fundamentalist (the book may have its detractors but no one can fault that marvellously inspired title). But if you haven't come across it yet, I so have to tell you about Mohamed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Hanif wrote the book after doing a MA in Creative Writing while heading the BBC's Urdu service in London. It's about a rather grim period of our political history – the Zia-ul-Haq era and the General's subsequent assassination. But if anything so sombre can be hilariously, irreverently funny in hindsight, this book has got to be it. I haven't been able to put it down since I bought it at that evening. If you don't chuckle aloud (and I have several times while reading it on the bus) then you either are too stupid to get the jokes or totally overawed by the author's easy outrageousness. If I want to sum this book up in one word it would have to be the Urdu 'mazedaar'. Somehow, 'delicious' doesn't have the same implications. In any case, buy it the minute it comes out there and definitely before it gets banned. You never know – we get all self-righteous about some things. So all in all, it has been a rather Pakistani month for this Karachiite in London. The fashion show at the High Commission, the Writers evening at Asia House. And then there was GEO Films showing of Khuda Kay Liye to students at Cambridge University where I spoke of mullahs and movies in the Q & A sessions afterwards. Next on the agenda is Christie's sale of contemporary Pakistani art with Salima Hashmi at the helm. You know what it is about London, when it rains it pours! Surprisingly, the weather outlook has remained decidedly sunny. Must be that Karachi touch.