A woman’s armour | Instep

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Pakistani women, in Pakistani dress, look extremely well dressed. In fact, if you lift your head and look around, you will surely find that at least 80% of the women sharing the space with you are quite stylish. Looks like they finally found their shape. Of these, 60% will likely be dressed in a boxy silhouette, with tailored trousers and, possibly, neatly blow-dried hair.

You see, as they scramble to do everything from holding down jobs, raising families, or being crushed by the demands and constraints of a largely patriarchal society, they need to make sure they’re doing as much as possible. Looks structured.

It hasn’t always been this way. If you grew up anytime between 1994 and 2005, you know this to be true. Women have to hold their baby, and cook dinner, while they type official presentations and emails or get their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, all the while making sure their dupatta is in place. Don’t slip off the shoulders. It’s not really a leap to imagine that those same women would now prefer to wear clothes they can control, or conversely, clothes with such streamlined designs, that nothing is left to chance.

In the last few years, Pakistani retail outlets have started offering smart and corded products. First an experimental piece or two, then a rack full, and now, entire ‘basic’ lines dedicated to solid-colored, minimal-print tops and sets that women can buy off the rack at reasonable prices.

What changed? How did we break out of assumed feminine boundaries in life and style to be who we are, and live as we do?

For Salman Parekh, CEO of Manto, a clothing brand that sells corduroys in particularly solid or thoughtful text prints, tailored for men and women with a sherwani or Lucknowi collar, the label is simply The demand was answered.

“I made a prototype,” he says, “with the kind of material I wanted, the color I wanted, the kind of tailoring I was looking for. And it was super comfortable and looked good.” Soon, my wife, Bisma, wanted to wear something similar, but when we went looking for it, we couldn’t find anything.

Bisma Parekh’s problem is actually not a new one. Women who want that cut, or that collar, or those pockets, have long had to shop from men’s racks, which often means compromising on fit, or tailoring a men’s kurta. Which not everyone has the time or patience for. for

“The average person spends 16 minutes a day deciding what to wear. I really wanted a wardrobe where the choices were already made for me and saved a surprising amount of time, “And when I replicated the design for my wife, it struck me that other women were looking for a similar style,” says Parekh. And so Manto was born.

Minto’s customers are largely exclusive, of course, still women who prefer a traditionally feminine shirt, or at least a little embellishment to feel and look like they got their money’s worth. is Where Minto beats many other labels is in its fabrics, which are of excellent quality, hence driving up the prices of the clothes.

Parekh noted that Minto’s clothes are popular with the 40 to 60 demographic, which, on further investigation, includes those working in the medical, education and journalism industries. “It’s really word of mouth,” says Parekh, “Our designs are favored by certain communities, and we’re fine with that.”

While Salman Parekh is catering to the growing demand, Khadija Rehman, director of operations and design at Generation, one of Pakistan’s oldest retail fashion houses, feels that it was a broader cultural shift that led to more gave rise to the demand for modest clothing.

In 2005, when Khadija returned to Pakistan, she found an environment she was more accustomed to.

“Do you remember there was a time when there were reports of women wearing sleeveless shirts injecting the AIDS virus into their arms?” Khadija remembers one of Pakistan’s favorite urban legends. If you show your arms, someone will surely cut them off or inject them with a deadly virus.

“Society just got a lot more conservative, and because the mentality was changing, the environment wasn’t comfortable enough for everyone to dress the way they wanted.

She says, “In the generation we have high demand for sleeveless tops, sherwani collars. Generations has always been pretty mainstream, and always a bit offbeat, so even when the labels fit, it really doesn’t.

You will still find a lush feminine shape shirt, a straight white kurta, some brightly printed, with a variety of lowers. “We are trying to bring back the shalwar, but it never happens,” says Khadija, a bit ruefully. Demand for tailored trousers, however, remains. “They look more pulled together,” Khadija admits.

If we go from top to bottom, the demand for – for lack of a better term – gender-neutral clothing has increased among women in Pakistan. While this may certainly be a very logical response to a rapidly changing, more conservative social mindset, it may be more than that.

Ali Naqi Bhojani, head of ready-to-wear (RTW) concept in khadi, has witnessed the transformation over the past 15 years. Starting his career at Cambridge, and moving on to textile giant Gul Ahmed, he has worked across the industry enough to understand why, and exactly how, this trend developed.

Do you remember the catalogs that Gul Ahmed used to print? They were as thick as a special edition of Vogue or Cosmopolitan and dropped into every household at once.

Catalogs are well remembered. Many of us flipped through them and copied the designs of our summer wardrobes until we had the option to buy the rack.

“Till then, ‘women’s clothing’ was just unstitched clothes,” Ali continues, “Women usually like to design their own clothes and get a custom fit, and the three-piece suit is the ultimate. It was a trend.”

Undoubtedly, Pakistan has always been a stylish country. Women – and most men – have always been fond of fashionable dressing. And oriental clothing is actually quite flexible in terms of how one chooses to wear it. Every global trend and daily life demand has managed to make its presence felt in the structure of the salwar kameez, and this kind of adaptability is something we all look for in our everyday companions. (Side note: Should strong, successful women just compare their partners to their shalwar kameez qualities and dump them if they don’t match?)

In the early ’90s, while you couldn’t afford the lacy, pearl-white Rizwan Baig, or the bravado of Maheen Khan, you could delve into the fashion spreads of Women’s Own, Instep, and the Herald. are When fashion and style became one thing Pakistani women could understand enough to covet, they started workshopping their favorite trends in designs stitched by their tailors. For a long time we wore at least one diaphanous separate and trailed long dupatta behind us and we were good. But like style, our tastes evolve, and those who cater to us note that evolution.

Seeing how popular his catalog designs became every year, Gul Ahmed initially stocked a women’s capsule collection at Ideas Store. And as more women entered the workforce – and it’s fair to assume that the racial divide is at work here, too – ready-to-wear found its customers.

“Women who work usually don’t have time to design, see a tailor and buy clothes,” speculates Ali, reflecting on global trends, how people around the world live. and access to information about clothing, all influenced the evolution of fashion in Pakistan.

“You also have to remember that in our part of the world, what people look for is comfortable wear. And the collared, cuffed, loose kurta for women is brought about by that instinct as well as modesty. to maintain. You may not want to take the dupatta anymore, but you still want some coverage,” Ali concluded.

The shift towards a streamlined, neutral, everyday look for women is interesting in light of the evolution of Pakistani fashion, but it’s also interesting to note the time frame surrounding these changes. We have gone from the triumphant and democratic 90s to the mid-00s, to the decadent end of the first decade of this century.

The second decade saw a greater awareness of gender politics and women reclaiming their place. As the popular meme goes, women don’t dress for men, they dress for other women, time of month, waxing schedule, etc. What we see now is a combination of all the things that the designers mentioned.

Society has taken a conservative turn, women want to save time by buying racks, and when they go out, especially in a professional capacity, they don’t want to be physically scrutinized, and distract from their intelligence. Want and skill set. They may not cover the entire route, and a tailored but fluid silhouette gives them ease of movement and a sense of protection. And this is not part of the misguided concept of feminism. It’s not women who want to dress like men or be like men (that’s not feminism at all), it’s women who respond to the stereotypical situations in which they constantly, inevitably and almost always find themselves. Pressured by men. Women are wearing their styles as their everyday wear, and they are wearing their everyday wear as armor. And that, we think, is the most beautiful thing about fashion and style: it’s always a personal statement, intentional, and something women know they can rely on every single day. are so that they can center the day ahead.