Fashion: From comfort zone to twilight zone

Despite being in NY and overwhelmed with school, Ammar Belal still designs collections for his label.

LAHORE:

Ammar Belal has not left Pakistan. Rather, he is on his way to taking Pakistan to a global platform in fashion and creating a stepping stone for local designers to enter the arena.

Eyebrows were raised when he decided to move to New York last fall and the future of Ammar Belal brand was under scrutiny. But in a candid interview with The Express Tribune, the recent winner of Best Menswear Designer at the Lux Style Awards, talks about staying connected with Pakistan and reinventing himself in the Big Apple.

“I have by no means left Pakistan,” says Ammar, who has completed his first year at the Masters Program in Fashion Design at Parsons. Ammar is the first Pakistani to be accepted in this competitive programme, which accepts only 18 students per year (he tells us five students have already been dropped so the number has diminished). “You get a lot of attention back home and you become a big fish in a small sea,” he says, explaining his move.  “For me, it was not enough.”

He shares that the school was sceptical about taking him on initially, but finally agreed when he showed them a video of his work in Pakistan. “This experience has made me humble — you need to be told you are not that great every once in a while in order to push that creativity out of you,” he explains, adding that it is never too late to learn and that he is reinventing himself as a designer and creating pieces there that he could never have created in Pakistan. “To make it in the international market, you not only have to be present here, but your work needs to be viewed by the right people.”



Armed with the exhilarated feeling of reinvention, Ammar admits that his mind has reopened. “We, as a nation, have a lot of potential. I want to promote the Parsons programme among students in Pakistan because such exposure will allow us to compete with the rest of the world. We will always be known for our textiles and embellishments because that is what we have been doing for generations — it is all about channeling that talent in the right direction,” he says. Not only does the programme expose its handful of students to the industry, but it gives them rigorous projects; designers work with Kering, a French holding company that holds Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Venetta, Brioni, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. “We work with one design house that Kering represents and create a capsule collection for them,” he adds.

Ammar also worked with acclaimed American designer Philip Lim over the summer. “It has been a real eye opener for me. I have learnt how design houses work and how each aspect has been broken down to become a science,” he says.

Despite being away and overwhelmed with work for school, Ammar still designs collections for Ammar Belal and conducts fittings and meetings with clients at his studio in Lahore via Skype, while his family runs the store and takes care of the accounts.



Having started his career by launching the creative high street brand ABCD, Ammar evolved not only as an edgy women’s wear designer but also became the pioneer in luxury menswear in Pakistan. With his keen interest in designing Western wear for women, Ammar feels that the product is streamlined and caters to a niche market. “I respect lawn designers and bridal couture designers because they are competing with the entire industry in Pakistan, but as far as women’s Western wear goes, the market still needs to grow a lot more,” he says. While Ammar put out exciting women’s wear collections, he confesses that his menswear line paid the bills.

“There aren’t that many occasions to wear luxury Western wear to. I saw my city [Lahore] change after 2008,” he says, referring to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the subsequent drop in the number of balls and extravagant events.

It is clear that Ammar feels the need to push himself out of a comfort zone, so his work can be critiqued and improved. “The great thing about the Parsons programme is that your thesis is shown at New York Fashion Week with all the industry guns and editors attending the show,” he says, comparing it to designers who show at international fashion weeks because of good PR.

“A lot of people show at Paris Fashion Week or London Fashion Week but it is not just about showing at these venues. What is more important is who comes to see the collection.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2013.

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