There are plenty of women in Pakistan who visit their tailors on a daily basis. Standing in the narrow and often congested tailor shops, they spend hours mulling over designs, bargaining over stitching costs and squabbling over the final outcome of their efforts. Pointing out how the tailor has invariably taken their fabric and turned it into a complete fashion catastrophe, they rant, rave and send in the clothes for alteration. The tailor, in his claustrophobic corner, smiles smugly. For these ladies — regular clients of his — may complain and protest but ultimately, they have no choice but to come to him and wait as long as it takes until he deigns to have their clothes ready.

Such is the power that tailors have and quite often, they misuse it mercilessly. With stitching styles getting more complicated — shirts with multiple panels and embroidered borders are still all the rage — tailors charge astronomical prices for their labours. Brandishing their sinister scissor blades, they cut, sew and make a few bungling mistakes here and there. And they do all this at a languid pace, unconcerned that the clothes, promised to be ready within a week, could be delayed by a month or so.

It’s a painful process but up until recently, one that women helplessly endured. But, now, with ready-to-wear prêt taking over the Pakistani woman’s wardrobe, the tailor’s days may be numbered. Designer Maria B., who has been making inroads into ready-to-wear for the past 11 years, calls it the “future of Pakistani fashion”.

“A lot of women work now and they don’t have the time nor the patience to spend hours over making clothes,” she surmises. “But they still do want to dress stylishly. For these women, comfortable, affordable ready-to-wear is the easiest route to take. This year, I decided to include ready-to-wear lawn suits at my outlets. I had noticed that my friends would be complaining that tailors took ages to stitch their lawn suits. This way, women wanting to wear designer lawn but with no time to set about getting it stitched, could simply just buy it off the rack. All the stitched clothes in my outlets, as well as in other shops, are available in a number of sizes, designed to suit women with varying physiques.”

It was this very observation that led Shamoon Sultan of Khaadi to include stitched kurtas and shirts in his shops. Initially, women could only purchase unstitched hand-woven cotton from Khaadi. Over time, simple kurtas for women became available and when they became a hit, Shamoon decided to delve into ready-to-wear with more embellishments. “We noticed that the dressier women’s apparel sold very well. We began to include more stitching styles, embroideries and borders. At one time, we had nine plain stitched kurtas and one fancy shirt; today the ratio in our women’s ready-to-wear line-up has become the complete opposite, with nine fancy shirts for every one simple kurta,” he says.

“However, this doesn’t mean that the demand for our unstitched pieces has gone down; we have always had a particular clientele that prefers to purchase our loose cloth. The age bracket for our ready-to-wear customers usually ranges from teenage girls to women in their late thirties.”

But while ready-to-wear may be more popular with younger women, Huma Adnan of FnkAsia feels that even older women will eventually accept the feasibility of buying stitched clothes. “I have customers who are well in their 60s and yet feel comfortable purchasing clothes off the rack,” she says. “If a woman enjoys fashion, it doesn’t matter what age she is. She will, of course, want to buy well-stitched, fashionable clothes from a trustworthy designer label. Besides, even a lot of older Pakistani women are working now. And working women usually just don’t want to deal with the hassle of getting their own clothes stitched.”

The growing popularity of ready-to-wear has lead to the mushroom growth of a number of labels. FnkAsia, Maria B., Deepak Perwani’s D-Philosophy, Khaadi and Khaadi Khaas, among others, have clothes that vary from formal to semi-formal to daily-wear. Shops like Ego, Daaman, Sheep, Origins, Crossroads and Outfitters have a greater range of casual, affordable clothes.

Nevertheless, this hardly means that the incorrigible tailors are going out of work. Old habits die hard and in Pakistan, there will always be women who will want to get their clothes stitched. The recent frenzy at lawn exhibitions is testament to the continuing popularity of unstitched three-pieces.

Designer Kamiar Rokni succinctly puts it, “There will always be women who enjoy spending hours with the machine embroidery-walas and at the tailor’s. For them, tailors will always be around. There are working women who don’t have the patience for tailors but at the same time, there are plenty of housewives for whom clothes-making is a hobby.”

In a balance that caters to the particular preferences of different women, ready-to-wear shops coexist alongside tailors. Some 15 years ago, we had just an odd Generation and Teejays, vying for a place in the ready-to-wear bracket. Now, women have increasingly more choices. Clothes purchased off the rack are convenient and well-stitched. They’re also very unique — as opposed to the mayhem-inducing lawn suits that may be beautiful but eventually become so common, they begin resembling veritable school uniforms.