Creating a palette that skims the nude, Sadaf Fawad Khan this year has stepped into the lawn market with an exception to the rule. While the summer fabric designed for women is always inundated with print and design, Sadaf has opted to foray into menswear with a palette that is minimalist and yet royal. The eight designs that she has created for her Hazure line begin with the classic white on white and stay within sophisticated peripheries of beige and black even as they reach out to the one avocado green in the collection. There is no flora and fauna, no rainbow or rainforest.
“Men’s fashion has always been good for us and we saw that there was a big opportunity to push unstitched,” Sadaf shared while speaking to Something Haute. “Plus, I had no idea what I could do that was different in women’s lawn.”
What she has created is a value added product. Embroidered loose fabric may be available in abundance in the market but Sadaf has developed her own embroideries. Inspired by motifs and compositions of Islamic architecture, the result is a dignified style that is neither flimsy nor cumbersome.
“The fabric can be a kurta and a waistcoat or even a prince coat,” she explains. “It’s rich embroidery. It is opulent. It’s pure lawn with a pure silk thread. And there is a luster to it but it’s not synthetic.”
Better still, the collection is androgynous and has a unisex appeal. Sadaf offers each design in an unstitched as well as stitched option for primarily 80% of her clientele, which is outside Pakistan. She takes pride in the fact that the designs shown in the catalogue, whether a kurta or prince coat, have all been managed within the one cut piece. What you see is what you get.
Priced between PKR 12,000 and 22,000, Hazure is not inexpensive by any standard. But put in perspective, it’s a value added product. The average designer lawn outfit this year is retailing for a whopping 12-20,000 and it falls within a one-season buy; no one wears last year’s lawn. Hazure, on the other hand is a customized, limited edition product that has timeless appeal. It’s certainly not for daily wear but for occasion-wear through summer, be it Ramazan events, Eid or then summer weddings. And a design bought this year will be just as relevant a couple of years down time.
This actually makes one wonder, how is Sadaf going to improvise on classics season after season? We’ll just have to wait and see!
