Why Fashion Matters

Khadija

It was last week`s Friday Magazine of Daily Jasarat Karachi. Issue of February 18.

I am happy to know that Urdu is still alive and people are proud to learn and ``boast`` of knowing it.

9:Catchy
..``Since it`s not ``in fashion`` to read Urdu newspapers and I am sure none...``

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In the same vein.

The jahils would not be able to read this. What a pity. Jahil means ignorant, & sometimes synonmously, illiterate as well. In the present context it is those baighairats from Paki-Land who know english but take a perverse pride in the fact that their urdu (national language) is nil or weak.

I do not know what would one call those people who are not only ignorant but announce their ignorance in a fashionable flaunting kind of way.

But then discussions and debates are conducted ( ``english please! we are educated slaves-of-the west``) in english because by talking & dressing foreignish they feel their IQ level jump a few notches above those ``urdu-medium-types``.

They should have listened to the boy from India who topped in IITJit from India , who has been marked for NASA training..Nice Village-accented URDU/HINDI he spoke. Brains do not need crutches. Einstein did not know english--only Hebrew & German!

Show me a high achiever in ANY field and I`ll show you someone from a Madressa background or Urdu background. No Ba Ba Blacksheep has EVER attained any glory in any field except that of becoming servants of multi-nationals ( Perks they mistake for `progress` and ``success``--the wretched, the cursed, the Laan`tees)

Dear Khadija:

I partially agree with your conception that middle/lower middle [fiscal] classes have not been prompting to create any mode of fashion. However they are booming in majority and can be regarded as a litmus test for all fashions to trend/facade processes. Therefore we cannot regard them as trend setters but trend followers/adopters which set directions of the local industries to produce ins and leave outs.
To make things more clearer this is all matter of dignity of opinion. When the time come that attitude/outlook of a common person is considered in equal spaces then we will be more prolific and fashion would no more be a bridge.

[the arguements made by me got limited to clothing category of fashion, the general remarks by shandana are worth to read.]

interesting!!!! article different from the norm and a good subject in my opinion to pick because i think fasion is a big part of our culture and a eye opener in nowdays.

The last paragraph your article pretty much says it all.

Also, whatever happened to....``beauty is in the eye of the beholder``?

Since it`s not ``in fashion`` to read Urdu newspapers and I am sure none of you read it. Therefore, I like to share with you the Daily Jasarat newspaper`s Friday Magazine`s Editorial on Khadija`s article.

Editorial.

apologies for this instrusion. would appreciate if you take time to visit the ANAA site, read and sign the petition please. every drop in the the bucket would help. ANAA

Anybody who is willing to take Ms. F Altaf seriously should be getting their heads examined. She and her ilk are nothing than stupidity glorifiers, glorifing mindlessness in the name of promoting fashion to the masses? Puleeez, give me a break.

quoting shandana: here`s my problem with fashion in pakistan...it can be all of the things you mentioned and more (a creative art, a reflection of society, a comment on the times, a manifestation of new/radical ideas, an aesthetic or intellectual challenge or call to arms, a lightening pole for the uptight etc) but 99% of the time it isn`t.....and then there is the boom in fashion publications/the ranks of fashion journalists (though really do we have any in pakistan honestly?) which helps maintain the lie. end quote.

i totally agree. check this scenario: a certain second or third cousin bought a 100,000 rupees lehnga for her wedding, and was beaming and delusional through the whole transaction. 2 second incident happened as we walk out, an old woman with snow white hair and a torn shalwar revealing her knees asks for two rupees. Like all such 2 second incidents, that cousin casually refused and walked on. seems familiar?

fashion of the sort in pakistan is simply a cruel joke on pakistan`s poor. face it.

Khadija,

Fashion is definitely text we wear, read, decode, signify with. There is this wearable narrative that is explicated by the wearer wearing the clothes/text....but then all those subsumed voices such as the invisible labor that produced the piece-a labor of many hands. I`m thinking of Robert Pinsky`s Shirt poem and Sweet Honey in the Rock`s Are My Hands Clean? song-an awesome lyric that follows the route of labor, material and marketing that goes into making one piece of clothing.

Great to read your piece and hope to read more!

k:

another welcome back:)

this is by one of the better over-views of the fashion scene in pakistan...concise and pointed...(yes..am leading somewhere)...wish you had said something about the male accessories also...

those rags they wear around the neck are hideous...the kaam around the neck and sleeves and sometimes around the front...obnoxious and so effeminate... so meerasi like...no, no nothing against meerasis and performing artists wearing them...

...and much to the consternation of weight watchers international the shalwars are so ...so accomodating...and impractical...from the male perspective at least;)...what with the leather belts as waist-checkers not to mention zippers... i read the iconoclastic mahajirzadeh was working on a patent for shalwars with zippers...but i digress as usual...

...that point about trickle down and trickle up was interesting...perhaps we can add another one?...sideways-trickle?...have made this (superficial) observation watching the pakistani channels available here...more and more pakistani actresses are wearing saris...and another admission that will qualify for fatwa-abuse...majority of them cannot carry it gracefully enough...speaking of grace...nah, guess am in enough trouble...

lve

t

hey khadija.

here`s my problem with fashion in pakistan...it can be all of the things you mentioned and more (a creative art, a reflection of society, a comment on the times, a manifestation of new/radical ideas, an aesthetic or intellectual challenge or call to arms, a lightening pole for the uptight etc) but 99% of the time it isn`t. when i think of pakistani fashion, i can think of only one designer who really tried to take it to that level, zain mustafa. despite several promising starts all other exciting geysers turn into puddles sooner rather than later.

it would be interesting to hear you cite the names of those whose works illustrates that statement as a falsehood.

plus the same faces have ruled the fashion industry for a little too long now without actually offering anything new or exciting, which sort of exposes the facade of fashion being about evolution/change/freshness etc.

and then there is the boom in fashion publications/the ranks of fashion journalists (though really do we have any in pakistan honestly?) which helps maintain the lie.

the point is, i dont neccesarily think fashion is trivial or meaningless, i just think 99% of the pakistani fashion industry is.

best, i`m sure you`ll keep writing about whatever you want regardless of what killjoys like myself think :)

shandana

Hi Khadija:

Interesting...you have used fashion only vis-a-vis clothes, but if we extend it to trends then the connotations are not seen as flippant. Punk and grunge are in fact anti-fashion that set trends, as any contrarian viewpoint does.

Fashion is an important yardstick by which to gauge how societies see themselves and like to be seen...is that not the reason that people in non-western societies innovate within the parameters of their ethnic clothing, such as working around salwaar-kameeses and sarees?

I think both attractiveness-functionality and trickery-triviality can be interchanged at the drop of a glass slipper!

Regards,
Farzana

Khadija:

``Going further than art and politics, fashion also becomes a signifier of class structures. Such is the nature of social class that the elite never mix well with the commoners.``
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``But it doesn’t stop there. The commoners use it as a bridge to become nearer to their social superiors. ``

I agree with your notions about Fashion. Fashion has been always a matter of prestige in elites of our Pakistan. Which tends to transform and twists in affordable shapes till it descendes to middle and then lower middle financial hierarchy. Its been a long term hedious fact to relate every form of art to our economic freezing state and liberty in freedom of expression. However this can be stressed true as well. But if middle/lower middle class adopts the ongoing trends of fashions not to be expressive but to hide their class structure then its death of art and its cause.
I remember that two years back I went to market with a friend, she had to carry a survey on sort of ``Marketing trend of stitched n unstitched Clothing.`` for her project .We came across a fashion designer. During filling surveying questionare he told that he is also a painter and paints for decoring of ``Governer Houses``. This made my ears to furthermore listen to him. And it also showed the artistic trends in Our Society as well.