Come summer, we’ve been prone to slip into a lawn bubble. It’s been a pretty one, no doubt, although it has had the tendency to veer towards the over-the-top. Multiple billboards festooned across major cities have preceded lawn collection launches, often featuring celebrities clad in three-piece glory and sometimes accompanied by glossy ‘red carpet’ affairs.

Over time, one has witnessed the bubble enlarging, made wider by masses of lawn-crazed aficionados who arrive in droves at exhibits and retail stores. Unstitched luxury designer lawns with their myriad add-ons have often been identified as major money-earners, the undisputed doyennes of high-street Pakistani fashion.

At present; although lawn billboards still dot city landscapes, they’ve diminished in number. Aided by the rise of affordable, easily available ready-to-wear options, the lawn bubble has now floated down from the giddy heights of massive popularity and is threatened (ever-so-slightly) by the needle of stitched ready-to-wear ware.

That doesn’t mean it’s ready to pop, and to be fair it probably never will given that the fabric is easily the most sensible sartorial option for the sweltering Pakistani heat. As Shamoon Sultan of Khaadi — who dabbles quite successfully in unstitched as well as stitched lawn — says, “There will always be plenty of women who will enjoy buying loose fabric and getting it stitched according to their own design preferences. The bigger cities may have more working women who are cramped for time but in the smaller towns, getting clothes stitched is often a hobby that women enjoy.”

Still, there are certainly fewer unstitched lawn brands in the market. In the past, one saw the lawn bandwagon getting fairly overcrowded with everyone from textile mills to fashion designers, models and even morning talk-show hosts jumping on board for a piece of the action. Many of them have now retreated, claiming to be ‘bored’ with the fabric or ‘busy’ with other work. In actual fact, the lawn behemoth only manages to mint money for some, leaving others crippled with losses and countless unsold suits.

Grist for the mills

Blazing ahead in the game, of course, are the textile mills with their gargantuan budgets and years of experience. Decades ago, mills like Gul Ahmed, alKaram and Lakhany Silk Mills ruled the roost with their basic three-piece suits. As the fabric proceeded to become evening wear over the last few years, they promptly added in entire product lines of ‘luxury’ formal lawns and included them in their encyclopedic glossy lawn catalogues. With standalone stores dotted across the country and beyond and strong distribution ties with major retailers, lawn spells out big business for the mills.

And an association with fashion, of course, adds a veneer of glamour to lawns.

This is why brands such as Gul Ahmed, Lala Textiles and Kayseria are increasingly keen to showcase the diversity of their fabrics through local fashion weeks. More significantly, though, lawn’s predilection towards high fashion has led to the infamous mill-designer relation where textile bigwigs have liaised with hot and happening fashion designers, enlisting them to design prints for them. Sana Safinaz, Rizwan Beyg and Shamaeel Ansari were some of the first few pioneers of designer lawn — only to be followed by all and sundry many years later.

It’s the desi version of Karl Lagerfeld designing for H&M — only, it hasn’t always worked.

The designer-mill conundrum

Not all design sensibilities, it turns out, translate well on to lawn. Some designers do it quite effectively, earning accolades and revenue for themselves and their associated mill — Khadijah Shah’s Elan for Hussain Textiles and Zara Shahjahan’s Kamal Lawn immediately come to mind. There are other designers who have been known to spin out truly garish designs and there have been times when mill owners have lamented that designers don’t apply themselves seriously to lawn. Once being paid a fixed amount, the designer no longer earns from the sales of the suits and ends up creating mundane prints that hardly sell. It spells out major losses for mills and consequently, many of them have now stepped out of the ‘designer’ lawn brigade.

An exception is the Zeniya Group, which works with international brands such as Perry Ellis and Van Heusen. They are now collaborating with Deepak Perwani on their new lawn, titled “Zeniya by Deepak Perwani”.

Gul Ahmed, most ostensibly, has always shied away from taking known designers on board. Why share the limelight when you’re the ‘original lawn’ as they like to profess, a huge name in your own right? Lakhany Silk Mills, another major player, had Sana Safinaz designing for them years ago. Once having established its repute, however, the mill has preferred to sell lawn on its own steam — and it does so remarkably well.

Firdous Textile Mills, similarly, stick to their own brand name, garnering sales with a little help from Bollywood next door. Pakistani lawn is in demand in India and the UAE, and Bollywood actresses serve as well-known faces in the market. Even locally, Firdous’ sales have often skyrocketed — you may not need a known designer, apparently, as long as you’ve got a Deepika or Kareena on board!

What makes a lawn sell?

Crescent Lawn by Faraz Manan, meanwhile, boasts a designer tag as well as a Bollywood brand ambassador, Kareena Kapoor. Khadijah Shah’s Elan flits from one brand ambassador to the other; Bollywood siren Nargis Fakhri last year and local beauty Mahira Khan this time around. The Asim Jofa convertible-drivin’, diamond-laden woman was Iman Ali for the longest time although now, the brand has moved on to new faces. Arjumand Amin of Lahore’s popular Mahnoush Lawn, similarly, has never fixated on any one model. The widely popular Kayseria lawn doesn’t stick to one ambassador either, letting their brand stand out as an entity on its own. And then, of course, Junaid Jamshed dispenses with models entirely.

Does having a brand ambasador help? “It may generate hype to some extent, just like a lawn associated with known designers piques consumer interest,” observes Safinaz Munir of Sana Safinaz Lawn. “Ultimately, though, what makes lawn sell is the design, the fabric quality and its value for money.” And Safinaz should know — for years now, their lawn has inspired mass hysteria, traffic jams and a black market trade where unscrupulous retailers cash in on popular, supposedly ‘out-of-stock’ prints by selling them for more than the original print. This year, customers at the Sana Safinaz standalone store on Karachi’s Tariq Road were outraged when certain prints ran out of stock on the day of the lawn launch.

“We’d printed a huge number of suits but what could we do when so many customers at this one store wanted to buy just those three particular prints?” exclaims a flummoxed Safinaz, who plans to increase production by next year.

That’s the lawn ‘sold out’ phenomenon for you. It’s a genuine predicament for Sana Safinaz while for others it’s often been a marketing gimmick devised to create customer interest. “We’ve produced a good number of prints — we refuse to be sold out!” joked Umair Tabani of Sania Maskatiya at his brand’s lawn launch last year. If a limited number of lawn prints were produced, they were more likely to be sold out. It didn’t necessarily mean that the lawn was an all-out success — but it did give lawn’s so-called moguls an opportunity to preen.

What also brings in the sales is the right timing. Junaid Jamshed has made it a point to always bring out his successful lawn line at the onset of summer. Sana Safinaz are quick to follow. Gul Ahmed is lucky enough to have a consistent clientele and launches six collections this year. ‘Eid lawn’ is a great earner also — Sania Maskatiya’s independent label, in fact, will launch close to the festive season this time. Designer Umar Sayeed, with his popular prints for AlKaram, likens lawns to mangoes! “You have to launch them when the time is ripe — a little early, and customers think it isn’t hot enough yet; a little late and they no longer have the budget or the interest.”

Taking fashion forward — lawn meets pret

But why wait for lawn and then get it stitched, when one can just buy clothes off the rack? As life whizzes by, breakneck, jam-packed, panic-struck visits to the tailor have become tedious. And nobody likes paying hefty prices for an outfit — for luxury lawn, today, is generally priced at Rs5,000 and above — only to see many more women wearing the same. Besides, who wants to wear sequin-laden three-piece finery on a daily basis? There’s a definite increase in demand among women for the easy convenience of ready-to-wear.

Affordable pret brands such a Daaman and Sheep have built a steady clientele and lawn pros such as Gul Ahmed, alKaram, Sana Safinaz and Bonanza all have a disparate range of stitched separates at their ateliers. Luxury-pret labels such as Sania Maskatiya, Unbeatable and Shamaeel have begun dabbling in affordable lawn tunics. Khaadi and Maria B. are two retailiers that started off with pret and then moved on to unstitched fabric.

Prices for stitched lawn generally begin at Rs1,800 for basic shirts, as in the case of Bonanza’s extremely economical Satrangi line, going up to Rs10,000 for stitched three-piece suits. Quite cost-effective, considering that stitching costs and the general anxiety caused by visiting a befuddled tailor gets eliminated. One hears fantastical stories of women leaving a lawn exhibition with buckets of water in their cars. Such is their rush to get their suits stitched that they shrink the fabric in the car and proceed directly to the tailor. Pret, if nothing else, eliminates such ludicrous extreme-case scenarios.

Is prêt about to overtake stitched lawn? Not yet. Waleed Zaman of Kayseria says it will at least take 10 years. “The demand for unstitched cloth is unparalleled but the convenience of ready-to-wear is appealing to a certain clientele,” he observes. Shehnaz Basit, Director Marketing Gul Ahmed textiles foresees changes in the market within the next five years. “The demand for ready-to-wear apparel is certainly increasing,” she says.

But lawn — stitched or unstitched — unwaveringly remains the fabric du jour for our long summers. Fashion’s lawn bubble floats on, as it always has, through a diverse spectrum of customers, ever-changing palettes, malls and standalone retailers, frenzied customers and traffic jams, on and on and on.