PSFW Day One: Hussain Rehar plays with the fifth dimension

Designers brought the eighties back, handheld them across the barrier of conventional expectations and took them fashion forward at the opening day of the PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week SS 2019. The day started off in a serene, subliminal way with gentle luxury from Zara Shahjahan, showing at this platform after two years. It proceeded with Sania Maskatiya, who also chose to go down the luxury wedding wear route, showcasing a very aesthetically sound, colourful collection. But there onwards it was all crazy cool. If the first two shows were a symphony, then the rest of the day was rock all the way through. These were the FutureSex/LoveSounds of fashion.FIRST THERE WAS BEAUTYZara ShahjahanCollection: AdabZara opened fashion week with a collection that very elegantly brought ancient Lucknow to 21st century Lahore. It was a medley of sophisticated, fuss free styles made for a woman with her heart in the past but her eyes on the future. Adab presented a range of innovative silhouettes, from hybrid gharara-dresses, Chughtai-esque layers, unconventional shalwar kameezes and more. The chand bala was the recurring motif in this collection while embellished, belted pouches offered a convenient and contemporary way of carrying a purse. The khussas just reinforced the fact that comfort goes hand in hand with contemporary fashion. It was good to have Zara back on the runway.Sania MaskatiyaCollection: IsfahanAfter having a field day with Sania Studio at NYFW – showing nothing but modern clothing – Sania decided to reconnect with luxury wedding wear for fashion week. While one did miss her pret, which is usually one of the strongest links in the PSFW lineup, there was enough appeal to be discovered in Isfahan. Sania used sorbet colours to build a range of fun, wedding clothes that played with silhouettes to keep them from being boring. There was balance in her palette and a sense of adventure in her silhouette. The craft, as expected from Sania, was an exciting medley of craft and print. Classic Sania.THEN THEY UNLEASHED THE BEASTSHussain ReharCollection: Fifth DimensionLet’s now stop, rewind and fast forward to the future. To the fifth dimension, to be exact. While one loves veterans and their commitment to keeping tradition alive, it’s this shameless hankering for breaking tradition that keeps fashion on its toes. Young designers like Hussain Rehar keep fashion on its toes, which is why Hussain Rehar was the high point of the day. Rehar’s models walked in as if they needed to be somewhere and were terribly late. The mood was racy and urgent, the aesthetic very electromagnetic. There were mesh jackets, sheer dresses, tons of bling and an attitude that reduced models to robots while allowing the clothes to light up like thousands of charged electrons. Very interstellar, very futuristic, very cool. Yahsir WaheedCollection: Samah Musst HaiThe young and upcoming Maanu set the pace for Yahsir Waheed’s Samah Musst Hai, which like the song, was a range of the designer’s thoughts starting with a longing for Lahori culture enmeshed in a love for textiles. The styles were by no means conventional or for the faint hearted; the clothes were rebellious in their attitude and daringly extrovert, quite like the people of Lahore and their proud brand of being OTT. Deconstructed, there was solid pret, from the cotton jackets, pantsuits and flared maxi dresses. There was also a liberal use of surface embellishment – sequins, three-dimensional textures, tassels and layered fabrics. It was a very technique-oriented collection, which at times stopped short of being wearable or even aesthetically appealing but as the memo goes – ugly is the new cool. Samah Musst Hai was very ganda gola, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing; one just wishes that Maanu’s suit had been given some colour/flavour too.Fahad HussaynCollection: Suraiya TitanicFahad Hussayn took the idea of kitsch a step further with Suraiya Titanic, which one saw as an ode to modern romance. It started with a love for colour, which was exciting; one just wishes this love affair hadn’t ended in a wedding segment. Suraiya’s strength was Fahad Hussayn’s Print Museum, a unique amalgamation of ideas from the designer’s mind. Fahad Hussayn has moved from dark to upbeat but there is quirk in his ideology; it’s a relief that he hasn’t entirely discarded his original aesthetic. So he put out sheer tights, airy and oversized belted jackets in florescent colours, printed innerwear making statements in fit and form; this was redefinition, again, of an acceptable aesthetic. – Photography by Faisal Farooqui

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