Running business: Rawalpindi’s bling market with all its glitter

Embroidery from Kamran Market talk of the town since 1950.

RAWALPINDI: Huddled behind Saddar Bazaar’s newly-built shopping malls lies the almost age old Kamran Market.

What started as a poultry and meat market along with grocery stores during the pre-partition times as part of the British era garrison is now famous for its embroidery stores.

The market is now acclaimed for the cloth on sale and its embroidery market displaying carefully crafted party dresses.

Although Kamran Market itself is more than a century old but its embroidery works began with hardly three or four tailor shops in the 1950’s, recalls one of the shop owners Muhammad Shaukat.

Shaukat himself has learned the craft from his father and said that embroidery has remained their family business for ages.

With most shopkeepers attentively guarding their designs, forbidding the customers to take pictures, Shaukat told The Express Tribune that designers who come to them for getting their designs materialised often copy motifs and designs from other dresses.

“They just replace and re-position a couple of motifs from one dress to another, and that’s how a new designer dress, with credits to the designer’s name, is made,” he reveals.

According to the craftsman, designs and trends have changed with times, but their craft and ability to adapt to new demands have remained stable.

“For example, hammer work, famous in the late 80’s, is back in demand and only the old and skilled craft workers that are capable of reintroducing it are in this market,” said Shaukat.

Some other shop-owners, however, remain carefree in copying designs from whatever means that are available to them.

Abdul Sattar, who learned the craft from Lahore, said that sometimes customers just order from dresses on display while others simply come up with a picture for us to replicate.

“With embroidery material brought from Moti Bazar and Tench Market, a single party dress can cost Rs4,000 to as much as Rs25,000, depending on how much time and material a design requires,” he said.

“Craftsmen charge 50 per cent out of the total cost for any dress, and that’s why overall prices have shot up in recent years,” Waqas Ahmed, another shop-owner, said.

“It’s a time-consuming activity and requires extensively skilled workers after all,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th,  2015.