Make way for Pakistan’s fashion bloggers

ISLAMABAD:

The business of fashion is just not about pretty clothes and petite models; rather, it’s a multi-dimensional industry involving innumerable people each making their contribution to the bigger picture.

Recent years have seen a tremendous surge in the field of fashion blogging — with prominent fashion bloggers like Katherine Kallon and Tavi Gevinson getting front row seats at major fashion shows, being treated like Vogue and Marie Claire editors.

The Pakistani fashion industry, with all its progress in recent years, has also observed a healthy influx of fashion bloggers itself. Let’s take a look at some of Pakistan’s best fashion blogs, which have made marks on radars of avid fashion followers with their quality of work, in-depth coverage and frequency of publication.

Pink 2.55 

Launched back in 2010, Pink 2.55 is the brainchild of Amara Javed, who has been running it solely ever since.

Known for its extensive coverage of fashion from red carpet events in New York to Bollywood, the runways of Lahore and event launches in Karachi, Pink 2.55 is one of the most popular and well-recognised fashion blogs to have come out of Pakistan.

Taking its name from the iconic Chanel 2.55 bag, Pink 2.55 has created quite a niche for itself among fashion lovers in Pakistan.

It was the winner of Best Fashion Blog at the Pakistan Blog Awards in 2011 and Javed was declared as one of the top 140 Twitterati of 2011 by The Express Tribune as well.

She declares Muse, Sania Maskatiya, Fahad Hussayn, Kamiar Rokni and high-street brands such as Khaadi and Daaman as the big guns in the industry right now.

Secret Closet: 

Secret Closet might be a new entrant but in its short time span of existence, it has found itself a dedicated readership due to its curtailed and refined coverage of fashion in Pakistan.

Secret Closet hails itself more as an online fashion portal than a blog, the very feature that distinguishes it from a bevy of other online fashion supplements coming out of the country.

Managed by a dedicated team of content writers and guest contributors, Secret Closet is providing something that even the established fashion councils failed at doing – the provision of detailed profiling of designers, collections and upcoming events.

With a directory maintaining profiles of over 120 designers and an ambition to discover and promote new talent, Secret Closet has garnered a fan base of over 7,000 and witnessed 200,000 plus visitors so far.

It has offered contributions to The Express Tribune Life & Style pages recently as well.

A Wardrobe Affair:  

Run by Anber Javed, A Wardrobe Affair is from one of the new crops of fashion bloggers who have created an impact with their peculiar take on celebrity style.

Launched in March this year, a healthy dose of both Pakistan and Indian fashion can be found on this blog. Javed’s work is more red carpet oriented than runway.

She covers red carpet looks and celebrity appearances replete with pictures and a careful dissection of their head-to-toe appearance.

Engineer by day and fashion blogger by night, Javed is based in Islamabad and says the one thing she would like to see changing in the industry is fashion council politics.

Style Stripped: 

Style Stripped is one of Pakistan’s earliest fashion blogs and one which has sustained for quite long. When it comes to trend and style spotting, Style Stripped has unarguably the keenest eye of all.

The blog found its way to prominence due to its extensive knowledge and penchant for Western fashion which set the benchmark for its features like ‘Bag Spotting’ and ‘Seeing Double’.

Style Stripped started out in 2008 and has witnessed everything from fashion week upheavals to the invasion of the red carpet culture.

Speaking about the industry’s current dynamics, Style Stripped finds the retail pricing issue to be tricky and finds inflated abnormal prices by designers as off-puting sometimes.

Its current favourites include Elan, Bunto Kazmi and Sania Maskatiya.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2012.

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