Lawn hater

A multitude of models on billboards, a ballroom and a stampede of bored aunties results in lawn exhibition.

Why lawn-snobs spend thousands on more or less similar prints every year is a complete mystery to some of us

Start with a surplus of women on gigantic billboards, throw in a ballroom at a five-star hotel, then unleash a stampede of bored aunties — and there you go. That’s a lawn exhibition for you. Ever been to one? No? Well then, you’ve successfully spared yourself from being prodded in the back by a hundred blood-tinted talons. Not to mention saved your patience and courtesy from being trampled upon by pointy stilettos, and your anger management skills from being tested most exhaustively.

To begin with, please stop calling them ‘lawn’ exhibitions. They would more readily qualify for being called Iman Ali exhibitions. Or Ayyan exhibitions.

Say hello to the most conniving forms of advertising, and send your love to dear old Marx. The ‘exhibition’ of lawn upon the slick body of a lady, bursting with the allures of youth and beauty (read: surgery and starvation) is the ugliest gimmick you’ll come across, and something you would want to shelter your daughter from. It’s like this: see how pretty that painted face is. See how beautifully the cloth falls upon that liposuctioned, tummy-tucked-after-being-starved-for-years torso of hers. Develop a crippling inferiority complex and spend bizarre amounts of money on the most grotesque prints of the most commonplace fabric to join the rat-race to elusive beauty. Thoughtless conformism is your new god.

My advice to you is to remember that there is nothing extraordinary about the product being advertised. This excellent, excellent variety of fabric can be purchased more cheaply and worn much more modestly. If you must buy designer lawn prints, remember that these labels come out every year. With new prints, ornaments and accessories. Which means that most lawn-snobs would rather die than wear a lawn suit for more than a year. Which also means that they will moronically trot off to exhibitions every year and spend absurd amounts of hard-earned money on over-priced cloth. Why they do so remains a complete mystery for many of us.



Because, you see, it’s more or less the same deal every single year. The same repetitive prints by most of the labels: the florals, the geometricals and the ethnics. Splash a magnified version of the same print on the dupatta, and finish off with a gigantic border in the most ridiculous of colors. Make sure the colour of the border is not present anywhere else in the ensemble, so that you can get full marks for incongruity. Cloud your aesthetic shortcomings by justifying the absurdity as ‘contrast’. Hang it upon the bare shoulders of your ‘exhibit’. Splash teasing images of her on billboards all over the city. And there you go. Now you can make your millions.

Alternatively, do several suits in black and white. Design an entire black-and-white range. Philosophise. Confuse them. “Oh, you see, my lawn is a portrayal of the status-quo in Afghanistan. The black stands for Nato forces, and the white for the Taliban. The blue lace stands for the UN. My inspiration comes from flowing water, flying birds, the art training I never got, and all the newspapers you never read.”

Oh, and the billboards! Yes, those billboards which add to nothing but car maintenance bills, with men gawking at the models instead of the road. The most destructive kind of ‘creativity’ let loose on yards of Panaflex and thrust in the faces of clueless masses. Though the photography is often brilliant, surely there are more sensible ways of displaying lawn than having yards of cloth draped around a woman whose expression portends complete gastric breakdown any second? Or a damsel wearing a scintillating dupatta over bare shoulders, while sprawled dreamily upon the sands of a shore. Try that on Clifton Beach on a Sunday, why don’t you?

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Published in The Express Tribune, Ms T, March 3^rd, 2013.

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