Exhibition at Café 9: New designers on the block
On the evening of June 3, designers and friends Nazish Hussain and Sabeen Ali exhibited their new collections at Café 9 in Zamzama.
Nazish Hussain Couture, Hussain’s label, is fun, with vibrant colours. The price range of her summer/spring collection starts from around Rs2,500 and goes up to Rs9,000. Hussain has previously exhibited her collections in Dubai, Canada and the USA. She graduated from the Asian Institute of Fashion Design just four years ago.
Hussain’s design philosophy has been “to move away from embroidery work and concentrate on trendy and fresh designs for the woman of today.” Her target market is females from the ages of 18 to 45 years. This is her debut launch in Karachi and she is available through appointment. She currently stocks her designs at a studio near Bilawal House in Clifton.
“In order to avoid repetition, I don’t use a design after it has been ordered three or four times,” said Hussain. “I incorporated 42 different designs in 48 of my pieces so that people could choose from a variety of clothes.”
Meanwhile, Sabeen Ali’s Goddess collection under the label of Shen was all about Western tops and silhouettes. This collection was priced between Rs1,200 to Rs5,000. Ali is a young designer whose mission “is to bring out the goddess in every girl.”
Explaining why she experimented with Western wear, she said: “In Karachi, you don’t find many people dabbling in this style. I believe there is a dearth of it, though almost everyone has a little collection in their wardrobe. Before I started designing, I used to travel to Dubai every three months to fetch some clothes for myself. But now, after my collection’s launch, this won’t be the case and there won’t be a problem for others either!” said an excited Ali.
“We joined hands in presenting our collections primarily so that we could provide women with trendy wear giving them best of both worlds, that is the East and the West,” explained Hussain. With the transporters strike also on that day, not many customers were seen at the exhibition in the afternoon. However, Hussain said that everything was sold out by the end of that day: “Given the unrest in the city and the strike, we were overwhelmed with the great response we received. I mean, the exhibition was supposed to go on for two days, but we sold the entire collection on the first day!”
Published in The Express Tribune, June 8th, 2011.
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