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All the right moves
The art and craft of being Vaneeza Ahmad
She was the girl next door who has become Pakistani fashion's
most recognizable face world over. Introducing Vinnie – model,
actress and now entrepreneur – the super model with looks
to kill and a killer instinct to match
By
Muniba Kamal
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Vinnie comes home
V Lawn is what she is most excited about these days. 'Lawn mogul'
is Vaneeza's latest avtar and one that she takes very seriously.
It consumes her because it is largely what she does best. She's
in total control in the driving seat knowing that she has come a
long way and is figuring out where to go next. She's on phone from
Gizri, finishing up some work which the kaarigars have been late
in delivering. She's asking them about the black gala and the importance
of pairing the suits up right for the exhibition.
She finally floats into her apartment on the tenth floor of a complex
in Karachi, wearing jeans and a V9 top from last season, designed
by Umar Sayeed. It's a busy apartment, even a good fifteen minutes
before Vaneeza arrives. There are young maids, her friend Affie
who is staying with her with two daughters who are toddlers. Vinny's
young teenaged sister Esha who's in Karachi staying with her older
sister and preparing for her O'levels, walks in and out, asking
her advice about what to wear for a girlie party that she is going
to. Vinnie gives her hell about getting her hair cut in layers.
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"That's
what women do, not girls your age."
"It looks nice in layers," insists Esha
"Wait till you need to straight blow dry it to make it look nice,"
snaps Vinny, not approving of a fifteen year old with flicks in her
hair. It's rather ironic considering that Vinny has been a part of
the fashion invasion that has hit the country riding on the back of
the media revolution.
Vaneeza is the single most influential style icon in Pakistan. And
it has taken far more than just modeling that got her to the top.
She has a knack of knowing which way the tide is turning and the guts
to ride the wave to the best of her ability. And this innate knowledge
of how to navigate an industry where the rules of engagement are still
in the process of being set have held her in good stead. |
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was something Jarrad Clark, Production Director for IMG Fashion noticed
when he met her for the first time at the media launch in Lahore.
"She has that," he said, making a hand gesture towards his
head, remarkably like cocking a gun with two fingers pointed as a
mock barrel. In retrospect, it seems that he was referring to her
killer instinct.
V Professional
She is the girl that everybody who matters knows and everybody else
knows of and yet she is also the girl nobody can put a finger on.
Vaneeza Ahmed, model, actress, entrepreneur, TV person, is a one-woman
juggernaut who has the ability to constantly surprise, tanatalise
and yes, catch people off guard. And it is this incredible ability
of hers that she has used to carve a niche for herself in an industry
which is notorious for being a place where models do not survive;
they mostly retire to become wives and mothers and/or shift gears
altogether and go for another career. To have made a career out
of modeling and acting is something that few achieve and make it
last.
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a country where women are not expected to be smart, especially if
they are models, Vaneeza changed the rules of the game. Modelling
had long been a profession that was a hobby for girls. They came into
it for the love of it. Sadie, Atiya Khan, Frieha Altaf, Faiza Amin,
Aliya Zaidi, Bibi, Sonya Mahnaz, Sadaf Malaterre, Iffat Rahim, Zoella
Alam, Iraj, the honor roll of the faces that gave Pakistani fashion
a beautiful face goes on and on. And yet, be it timing or coincidence,
the fashion industry was taken into a whole new direction with the
arrival of girls from the Ather Shahzad studio. Despite the brickbats
that are often hurled at them for monopolizing the industry, it has
to be said that Ather Shahzad took fashion to a whole new level. They
played godfathers to a whole new breed of models and Vinny, Aaminah
Haq and ZQ breezed onto the scene that has till then been dominated
by the proverbial 'style mafia' in Karachi. The onslaught from Lahore
that left the industry reeling. When models like Aliya Zaidi, Bibi
and Zoella retired from modeling, apart from Iraj, no one could hold
a candle to the Lahore girls. They came, they saw and they conquered
at a time when the fashion scene gathered momentum as the media grew
like never before in Pakistan. |
| Vinnie
was one of these faces and she made her mark because she was by far
the most beautiful one. Add to that her height, an innate girl next
door appeal and a natural physical grace ("You can put Vinnie
in a garbage dump and she would look elegant," famously observed
Tapu Javeri) and it was a mix that hadn't been witnessed by the fashion
industry before. Add to that the rock chick aura imparted to her by
the Junoon videos that she appeared in - 'Sayonee', 'Bullehya' and
of course later 'Naa Re Naa' with Ali Azmat and Vinnie acquired a
mythical presence, one that remains unrivalled in the public imagination.
Killer instinct
Vaneeza is good at pandering to urban myths. In the modern world
celebrity holds tremendous power over the public imagination. And
Vinnie realises this and more importantly has the guts to use it
to devastating affect. At the last Lux Style Awards in Malaysia,
she walked out to stand on one podium while Ali Azmat stood at the
other and the crowd went wild hooting and cheering. "You're
so loving this aren't you?" said Vaneeza knowingly with a smile.
And the crowd went wilder still.
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| Vaneeza
Ahmad and Ali Azmat remain the stuff of legend many years after they
were an item. Both of them know it and often play it to give awards
nights or videos a poignancy that no other show people can. They are
similar in that they are at ease with their public personas and enjoy
putting themselves out there. It's easy enough for Ali, after all
he is man, but Vinnie is the first woman to be out there the way she
is and hats off to her for that. |
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Given
her guts, it was only natural that out of all the girls it was Vaneeza
who made all the right moves and got to places where others dared
not go. Professional to the core, Vinny with her smiling demeanour
and no nakhra attitude won hearts and minds. One has witnessed the
requests of models and actresses asking for things like V8 juice,
salads, Japanese food from Fujiyama when out on a shoot. Vinny is
someone who will roll up her sleeves and have Student Biryani with
the unit. She is as charming with the spot boy as she is with corporate
head honcho; it comes naturally to her and she knows how to use it
to her advantage. Good will is the key to getting ahead and Vinnie
has earned oodles of it from almost everybody.
Today, Vinny laments the state of the industry saying: "I explain
to these girls that you don't have to do things on the side. Just
be smart about your career. There is enough money going around to
make a career of it." |
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And she is right. Forget listening to her and taking advice from her.
Vinny's career is the perfect blueprint about how to make it big.
Driving and looking at the V Lawn billboards all over town gives me
a sense of déjà vu. Years before I remember a time when
Vinnie's face looked out at you all over the city. There she was on
a Lux billboard, on Pepsi hoarding and flying around in a space age
ad for a mobile phone company. She is on billboards today too, but
the product she is selling is her own. Looking at the way Vinnie plays
the game, this had to happen sooner or later.
From modeling she moved into acting, where frankly speaking she was
not brilliant at histrionics unlike an Aaminah Haq or an Iman Ali.
Yet Vaneeza did it, got to know the parallel world of television and
in the process boosted her profile as a model. It is this that culminated
with three of the biggest ad campaigns around all featuring Vaneeza
as there face. And today there are adverts with her modeling her own
product: V Lawn. She has a knack for taking things to the next level,
which is unfortunately more than what one can say for most people
in the industry.
Fast track from
V9 to V Lawn
Which dedicated follower of fashion can forget the V9 juggernaut
when it happened two years ago? With an exciting new face of lawn
that was more vibrant than any that season, V9 was fronted by Vaneeza,
the most coveted face in the country and was manufactured by Mohammad
Farooq Textiles, one of the most prestigious mills in the country.
That it happened when Vaneeza and Shehryar Sumar were together made
it all the more powerful. The entrepreneur and the supermodel bounced
off each other and created a brand that overshadowed every lawn
(designer or otherwise) that came out that year. They followed the
launch of V9 with a trade show that had fashionistas talking for
days; for which they got designers like Sonya Battla, HSY, Deepak
Perwani, Umar Sayeed and Nomi Ansari to make collections from V9
fabric. It was the perfect marriage of fashion and textiles and
then, all of a sudden, it broke up.
"He shouldn't have used V9 once I had left," says Vaneeza
who is obviously cut up about the fact that V9 carries on without
her. There is still some tension about the logo that Vaneeza says
is a VA (her initials) and which Shehryar claims is V and inverted
V. Yet, she can rest easy in the fact that now V Lawn is doing as
well as V9 did when they were together and that her current relationship
with Sitara Textiles is based purely on business.
"I'm paying Sitara to print the lawn. It's my product,"
she tells Instep.
And when you probe her about what she got out of Mohammad Farooq
Textiles, which is where she got a solid grounding into the workings
of the textile industry, she's less forthcoming. "I've also
worked with Gul Ahmed and Al-Karam," she says nonchalantly
and refuses to elaborate further.
However, one knows that the kind of access she would have gotten
into the Sumar textile empire by virtue of being one day a member
of the family would have been unprecedented. I remember at the first
V9 exhibition, Vaneeza was there discussing the finer points of
lawn with Farooq Sumar himself. And this grounding is clear today
when she talk about machines with the right width for dupattas,
about how she's decided to make cotton shalwars because lawn ones
are see-through and that doesn't work for the Pakistani market and
about how most mills in Pakistan don't have the machine that can
print a single dupatta; they print cloth that fits the width of
two which is then slashed down the middle. It is difficult to see
how working in lawn advertising campaigns would impart this kind
of technical know how to anybody.
But that is the thing with Vaneeza - once she breaks with the past,
it is a very clean break and she focuses straight onto what lies
ahead. The past is the past, and if you want to move ahead you shouldn't
waste too much time going down memory lane.; far better to let it
be...
The Lawn Wars
First it was Karachi and then Lahore was buzzing with the lawn wars.
This time, Shehryar Sumar launched V9 first and immediately, posters
of Vaneeza V Lawn sprung up, a month before she was supposed to
exhibit. In an interview with Instep, Shehryar Sumar openly distanced
himself and V9 from Vaneeza Ahmed and wished her the best of luck,
saying that the market was big enough for both of them. She refused
to speak then and has never broken her silence on their relationship
on the record. However, there were reports in newspapers of how
her numerologist believed that the number 9 was unlucky for her.
It was remarkably like a story one would read in the Indian press
with the fascination across the border for lucky numbers and alphabets
and the celestial alignments within the universe.
"It's true!" she exclaims when asked about this. "I
do have a hakimjee. That year, he said the number nine was lucky
for me, but this year it is not."
And so in the market this year, there was V9 and V Lawn, one with
the industrial muscle of Mohammad Farooq Textiles and the other
flying on the wings of Vaneeza's beautiful face and endorsed by
her. On the surface everything was fine, but thanks to being a celebrity,
Vinnie made the rounds of various talk shows on most channels in
Pakistan to plug her product. On the other hand, Mohsin Sayeed ripped
apart V9 prints on a show on a local channel. The Boulevard in Lahore
backtracked on an exhibition they had offered V9 saying that he
was a textile mill and not a designer when they are all set to show
Al Karam lawn prints too. At the same time, V Lawn launched its
first line in Karachi to runaway success. Vaneeza's posters all
over town ensured that women beat the doors down.
Just a night before her exhibition when talking to Instep, Vinnie
acknowledged that she had heard about what happened at the Boulevard
through designer Nomi Ansari but didn't have time to delve into
it. She doesn't have to. Her support system seems to ensure that
her competition is kept away from the close knit circle of fashion
in Lahore.
Tycoon in the
making?
The lawn exhibitions are on and Vaneeza's V lawn has been a sensation.
The billboards of the most recognizable face in the country have
ensured that the hordes keep coming. And now, Vaneeza's plan is
to eventually open a flagship store for her lawn and then she plans
to get into prêt - not as it is understood by our fashion
industry in the elitist sense of the word, but clothes for everyday
Pakistanis, both separates and suits.
"I don't want to cater to the begums, I want to cater to the
awam," insists Vaneeza as she unfolds what she has planned
for the future. She will carry on modeling and acting and making
lawn. She has set up a company by the name of V Design which designs
her lawn amongst other things. They work under her guidelines as
she carries on expanding the biggest product that she has got, which
is Vaneeza Ahmad. And under the umbrella of her own being, Vaneeza
can manage to sell anything. She has become the most powerful arbiter
of taste in Pakistan and she has managed to do that because she
has the sense to reach out to the masses, be it through her plays
or through her lawn business.
Depending on which way the wind blows so she will turn. And as always,
she will have not one, not two but many a game plan, which she will
set into motion when the time is right. Vaneeza is an instinctive
creature and should remain so. After all, her instinct has never
failed her, has it?
Check out V Lawn on Style Section.
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