Cacophony reigns backstage at local fashion weeks. Models, make-up artistes and designers rush through a jigsaw of illuminated mirrors, trying on clothes, working out accessories and getting ready for a back-to-back line-up of fashion shows. Time and again, the stylists are seen consulting reference sheets, with details on eye make-up, hairstyles and the like.
Sometimes, a designer has a change of heart before his or her show, wanting the models’ looks to be changed. The backstage team quickly improvises. In recent times, they have also often relied on the efficient powers of WhatsApp in order to overcome technical glitches. Images are clicked and forwarded on to their head honcho, Nabila, who may be sitting several oceans away but is online to make sure things go smoothly.
Drifting onwards, one veers into the alleyways of androon Lahore where Ahsan Rahim’s upcoming Teefa in Trouble is currently being shot, starring Ali Zafar and Maya Ali. Technology, once again, comes into play when creating the actors’ looks. “Smear the kohl around Maya’s eyes a bit more,” Nabila advises to her team via Skype from her vantage point in Dubai.
Nabila’s make-up team, apparently, is omnipresent in every major project, regardless of whether the stylist herself is in the country or not. Geography has been deemed negligible in this age of science. It is the major factor that enables Nabila, on the verge of expanding internationally, to devise hair and make-up looks for an increasingly clustered fashion calendar and film projects.
Why aren’t more stylists coming on board mainstream fashion weeks, awards shows and film projects?
“Before an event or any other project, I decide upon different looks for each segment and my team sits through detailed sessions with me,” she explains. “It is for the purpose of catering to mainstream events that I maintain a big team and have trained them so that they can efficiently get 36 models ready for multiple fashion shows. I have invested into a huge stock of wigs, shoes and wardrobe that help enhance the looks of the models and the celebrities that I style. Ways are devised to make changes to hairpieces within 30 seconds and to get 16 models ready within six minutes. This is, simply, a passion for me. If I am there in the country, I am working with my team backstage. If I am not, we still have everything worked down to a science.”
Where art thou, stylists?
The effort shows in the looks created on the catwalk; sophisticated and even-toned. And yet, with Nabila’s N-Pro styling the lion’s share of major events, it makes one wonder why other stylists aren’t taking things forward.
Fashion and film are rapidly mushrooming in Pakistan and a single team of stylists, no matter how efficient, can’t possibly continue to mastermind every possible project. Also, while N-Pro’s creative talents are evident, shouldn’t we be seeing more aesthetics in the spotlight put forward by a versatile milieu of experts?
It isn’t even as if Pakistan has a dearth of stylists. Depilex, with its montage of 51 salons nationwide, occasionally takes part in fashion events. Sabs used to feature quite often at local fashion weeks. Tariq Amin, once constantly in the public eye, now rarely emerges to style the odd event or two.
Saima Rashid Bargfrede was often involved in events in the past and continues to style mainstream shoots. Ather Shahzad are old pros at fashion shoots and Shammal Qureshi of Toni & Guy North and Saeeda Mandviwala of Toni & Guy South Pakistan flit back and forth into the limelight. Young stylists such as Omayr Waqar and Hannan Siddique are increasingly being noticed for their work with well-known stars such as Mahira Khan and Humaima Malick.