It was the day before the Fashion Week in Lahore and Kamiar Rokni and his team was putting the finishing touches on their preparations. He was due to show on the second day and was very excited about another event that his label — along with his partner Tia — will be participating in: Paris Fashion Week for the Fall/Winter 2010 season to be held in the next couple of months.
“We’ve been working terribly hard on the collection. We’ve really pushed ourselves,” said Kamiar. “Every time we show, we want it to be a step above what we’ve done before so it’s quite a neurotic process because we’ve been second-guessing ourselves quite a bit.”
He assured Images on Sunday that his collection is ready. “It’s called East, West, North, South which is indicative of the different influences that have gone into it. The east, west, southern and northern part of Pakistan and in terms of world culture and the different influences we garner from them, which is also the hallmark of this design house.”
According to Kamiar, “What makes it different this time is that we’ve really distilled down to its more minimum form as far as some of the formal pieces are concerned; because that is the same collection that is going to Paris fashion week as well.”
To further show what he meant, he led us into the main lounge area of the fashion house where the collection was. Tia held up a black, white, pink, green and gold eastern wear ensemble and Kamiar held up a short light gold and metallic green dress. “The idea is to take all of the different cultural elements from here (the eastern-wear outfit) and distill elements, such as take the trellis design, and make it more westernized,” he explained. “For example, the rilli pattern becomes tone-on-tone and the trellis becomes a grid. The distilled piece goes to Paris and the local piece goes to the fashion week in Lahore… and hopefully a lot of other places.”
The duo will not be flying out to Paris for the fashion week. At the moment their agents — who have a base in both Dubai and Paris — have booked them a slot along with several Indian designers (Shane Peacock being one of them) and Lebanese designers. Their agents will be handling the showing of their collection for them this time round.
“Hopefully we’ll get some orders out of it. For me, the ideal situation would be if they ask us to do it next season so we can get something started,” said Kamiar referring to the business side of participating in fashion weeks. “That is what the fashion week in Lahore is all about.”
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