Written by: Nahal Sheikh
Posted on: September 21, 2020 | 
| 中文
(L to R) Saad Sarfraz Sheikh (Photo by Shuaib Rana) and Mehr F. Hussain
While getting her children to school in her pajamas and ruffled hair one early morning, a mother saw another woman with her children, “in a three-piece Lawn suit and blow-dried hair.” Despite the fancy getup, this woman looked miserable. This is where the idea of the recently published coffee table book, ‘Pakistan: A Fashionable History’ (2020) came about. The author, Mehr. F Hussain was the pajama-and-chaos-embracing woman looking at the other woman who dedicated her morning to looking flawless. Mehr thought to herself, “Who has told this woman to dress like this at this hour? Why does she feel the need to be ready like this at 7 AM?”
The same day she had a message from Saad Sarfraz Sheikh, a friend, and photojournalist, to which she replied: “Let’s write a book on the history of fashion.” Saad agreed almost instantly, and that’s where it all began. Three and a half years later they self-published this book, one that is on its way to revolutionizing the concept of archiving Pakistan’s culture.
Both have backgrounds in journalism: Mehr has been part of the international media industry for twelve years, and has worked at Friday Times, Good Times, The Nation, India’s Mail Today, The Diplomat and many more. Similarly, Saad’s photography has been featured in Al Jazeera, Vogue India, The Nation, The News on Sunday, and more. He’s also conducted photojournalism workshops at festivals and journalism institutes. Mehr and Saad have done investigative journalism before, but nothing focused on fashion. Once they started digging into Pakistan’s fashion history, they learned a lot more than expected.
The Famous Barkat Ali Saree Shop in Lahore
One would think that the book follows a simple Q&A format, in which Mehr and Saad interviewed notable people from the fashion industry and compiled everything. Once they started discussing the book’s content, and showed me a few pages on Zoom, I realised how dynamic the format and presentation is. It followed a historically chronological style, in which they not only interviewed designers, models, make-up artists and the like, but featured them visually as though the book was a magazine spread.
A 1984 copy of The Teenager
However, it is closer to a ‘coffee table book’, a visual collection meant to entertain or inspire people. When asked if this was the original intention, both Mehr and Saad agreed. The book should sit on your coffee table ready to be picked up and read through, therefore it had to be visually appealing and full of imagery. Saad believed that the visual characteristic of the book is key, because after all, the book is about fashion. Anyone would intrinsically link ‘fashion’ to something glossy, colorful and ‘out there.’
Saad, as a photographer, was in charge of the visual composition of the book. Because they started from post-partition to 2000, it was crucial to dig up old documents of fashion styles, trends, models, and field players across the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Wherever he looked, he was told nothing will be found, be it in old bazaars of Lahore or Karachi. He recalled, “It was very difficult to find archives because surprisingly a lot of designers, magazines, newspapers, artists barely kept archives of their own work.”
PK's 1st men's magazine set by Arshad Tareen
Saad got lucky when Newsline’s editor welcomed him into their basement of archives, right before the newspaper shut down. Although he did not find originals, the account copies were in decent condition. Without a scanner, he took photos of the copies from his DSLR camera, spending roughly seven hours in that basement. Grueling work aside, this experience was a treasure for Saad, and he knew it was going to be important for the book.”
Advertisments from the 1960s with bouffant hair and sarees
Mehr believes that fashion is a crucial lens into the culture of Pakistan. How the industry has evolved and established itself, also reflects how the country’s urban culture has evolved since Partition. Since there is generally a lack of access and availability of cultural archives, ‘A Fashionable History’ tries to fill that vacuum by being informative but also accessible. “Where do interested people or the youth go to learn the cultural and social histories of Pakistan, from fashion to food to music? Everything you read about Pakistan ends up being political, and “political means biased,” lamented Mehr.
Saad similarly recalled that when singer Atif Aslam sang ‘Tajdar-E-Haram’ at Coke Studio, his younger cousin remarked that it was an amazing original song. He was surprised to find that it was actually an old folk song that has existed in memory for generations, and Saad suspects that his cousin is not the only young person to have this impression.
For Mehr, the purpose of the book is that the new generation should not only be able to learn of their popular history, but also realize that they can also come forth with similar concepts of archiving culture. They can find topics that resonate with them, investigate them and innovate on ideas, with more of a curative touch. They could either publish externally, or even self-publish, especially since the Pakistani publishing market is still selective and small-scale.
Aitya Khan on the cover of Herald in 1987 (Right) and Meera (Left) on the cover of Men's Club in the 1990's
Initially, ‘A Fashionable History’ had a deal with an Indian publishing house, but plans fell through due to tense relations between Pakistan and India. The publishers were still willing to go forward, but since Pakistan had banned Indian books, it could not have been released here. A decision was made to self-publish in Pakistan, and have the book be available internationally. This led to Mehr opening a publishing house called ‘Zuka Books.’
Babra Sharif in 1991
She thought, “Why are political inconsistencies affecting culture and art across borders?” The important thing was that a book about Pakistan’s history of fashion had to be available for coffee tables in Pakistan.
Fashion in the 1990's
Challenges aside, Mehr and Saad’s journey is an interesting example of how the nature of writing and publishing books has changed in recent years, with new opportunities and new means to bring one’s work to the public. ‘A Fashionable History’ in particular, introduced a way to record Pakistani cultural history, open dialogue on how significant archival work is for our contemporary society, and encourage the youth to be brave and experiment with similar initiatives.
The project ended with the beginning of a new local publishing house that’s open to more creative work by writers with similar sentiments and constraints. As for ‘Pakistan: A Fashionable History,’ the book will serve as an important source that can be used to locate and identify some of Pakistan’s key cultural developments for years to come.
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