Ennis and I swapped a few e-mails the other day, in which, in-between soliciting my opinions on Begum Nawazish Ali and expressing a fear of pigeon-holing me, he offered up some ideas of stuff to talk about—politics, the whole “war on terror”, fashion, South Asian politics, that sort of thing.

Naturally, having all the depth of a particularly shallow puddle, I’ve opted to go with fashion.

Fashion, or what passes for it in Pakistan, really pisses me off. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t somehow find myself at least marginally involved with it, but in the years since I’ve been back, it’s taken on this quasi-mystical status as an “industry”, with a mythical “council” comprising…well, I’m not quite sure who’s on the council at present, but I’m going to go with “senior”, “established”, and/or “reputed” designers, since those are generally the terms that seem to be kosher.

Now, at the risk of back-tracking, let me just mention for the record that I know most of the designer community in Pakistan. It’s all a bit of the little pink mafia, with most designers either being gay men or straight women (I’m sorry, they’re not always gay, some of them are “bisexual”, or “bi-curious” snort; I’ve yet to meet a larger group of individuals who have managed to make what they describe as a “phase” last well over a decade or two). And then the photographers, stylists, event managers and “choreographers” all tend to fall into the same gay man/straight woman alliance, so when you combine the somewhat incestuous socialising with a severely limited pool, and then further refine it into an industry dominated by fags and their hags, it’s not hard to meet them all—and be declared their new best friend—within a matter of hours. And while I’ll admit that there’s a certain amount of glitz to the whole thing, to socialising with the crowd that everyone knows (of) and being dragged from one party to another, the realisation that it’s tinsel and not actual stardust comes rather rapidly.

I know, what a shocker, right? Fashion, shallow and superficial? Never!

What actually gets on my nerves about fashion in Pakistan is that it’s…well, it’s not really. Now I’ve never really understood fashion (I know, I risk losing my homosexual membership card with this admission), but I’ve sort of always followed the perspective that creating outré outfits that no one can either afford or actually wear in public for more than thirteen-and-a-half minutes may well be couture, but it’s not necessarily fashion. And admittedly, I adore Project Runway (although Laura was robbed, but we’ll get back to that)—to me, that’s sort of what the fashion industry is about—creating innovative, imaginative looks that while interesting, aren’t so completely insane that you can’t actually wear them out in public. But the key thing here is innovation and imagination. And learning about pattern-making, about sewing, about how fabrics need to be tailored, the basic tools that one would (I assume) require to be a successful designer.

Not here though, apparently. It seems that any bored hausfrau with a bit of extra cash and a tailor at her beck and call can set up her own “boutique” or label; and the successful designers seem to be the ones with the most technically adept tailors. I cannot for the life of me, imagine more than one or two of Pakistan’s most “famous” designers being able to go on a show like Project Runway. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s all bridal wear, ghararas, lenghas, shalwar kameez, and the occasional blouse, all differentiated only by the amount of embroidery, the length of the top or the trousers, and/or the general cut of the neck or the sleeves. There’s really not much else going on there. I’m not really doing it justice, but basically if you’ve seen one outfit, you’ve seen ‘em all. The menswear market is similarly limited, but enough on the limitations of the actual designs and clothes—suffice it to say that by virtue (again, we keep coming back to this) of an innately theocratic government and society, designers are fundamentally limited in what they can and cannot actually make. So I’m happy to give them a bit of a pass on the “oh good grief, it’s the same bloody thing as you made last week” element of the local fashion industry, they’re definitely working within some stringent conditions (although I continue to maintain that if they’re going to paint themselves as “edgy” and “daring”, they need to do more than slash a couple of vents in random pleats and contend that it’s a breakthrough in design).

I suppose it’s because of the somewhat repressive social regime that exists across the board here in Pakistan (although some are, of course, more repressed than others) that fashion has taken on this mythological sense of presence. There are fashion shows for just about everything, and they double as excuses for parties, for fundraisers, for self-promotion…just everything under the sun. Which again, somewhat understandable, but I hear about things like Pakistan Fashion Week and cringe just a little, imagining a week of catty designers screaming epithets at one another as models swish down the catwalk in a rapid succession of only-marginally-different outfits. I think though, that an exchange between two of my friends right after the massive earthquake last year neatly encapsulates the degree of self-importance that fashionistas in Pakistan exhibit. A friend, living in Islamabad, got a telephone call from a “fashion choreographer” (i.e. “Walk down the runway! Now turn! Now walk back!”—seriously, that’s the extent of it from what I’ve observed), the day after the earthquake. The first thing asked was not “Are you all right?”, but rather “Oh God, what am I going to do? The fashion show is going to be completely ruined, you HAVE to come and be the MC.” I suppose that could be a relatively innocuous statement coming from someone who couldn’t process the tragedy and was dealing with it in manageable chunks, but I see this mentality everywhere. It’s as though the designers and anyone associated with the domestic industry have an obsession with living up to the conceptual certainty of being a designer (read: like to do lots of drugs and party massively) without actually exhibiting any amount of technical skill or ability. Not that you’d think it from hearing them speak about how incredibly talented (and self-effacing, of course) they are, nope, not at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I have an enormous amount of respect for the fashion industry—never in the history of humankind has so much attention been paid to the deconstructed A-line skirt. And there’s definitely an industry present, remarkable in its own way for the sheer amount of business it generates, but what strikes me about the Pakistani fashion industry is the number of aspirations that lack any real substance. But you have “fashion journalists”, and “fashion photographers”, and “fashion stylists”, all of whom are focused on inflating the reputation of an industry that is very much in its fledgling stages, is dominated by about a dozen people, and which quite frankly, needs to get its shit together. There are some genuinely talented people out there, but they tend to get overlooked by the pompous gits who seem to think that their ability to describe an outfit in its most literal sense is some sort of major accomplishment. Seriously. It’s that attitude, the “fashion is the panacea for all earthly evils” thing that really gets on my tits, and it’s what limits the industry here severely. If someone could get everyone in the general industry knurd, I suspect very strongly, that once the medications have run their respective courses, people would really get their shiznit together.

I swear, I cannot WAIT for Heidi Klum to auf someone from the Pakistani version of Project Runway. Just to see the expressions on everyone’s faces.