Amazines_In A Troubled Country, Still Time For Hig

In A Troubled Country, Still Time For High Society

Hello! Pakistan is the local edition of the British celebrity magazine Hello!, famous for its soft-focus interviews with movie stars and lavish photo spreads of aristocrats and minor royalty. But the Pakistani publishers promise something different: an emphasis on their country oft side?that cuts across the relentless Western focus on burqas, bombs and the Taliban.

ee not out to save the world,Article Dashboard_Louis Vuitton Replica Handbags -,Gucci Online Shop,,?said Zahraa Saifullah Khan, 29, the magazine Pakistan-born, England-educated publisher. ut this is a starting point, to show that wee not all a bunch of terrorists with beards.?


Many young Pakistani professionals, tired of their country portrayal as a cauldron of chaos, would applaud that idea. But not all agree that airbrushed images of the moneyed upper-crust are the way to achieve it.

ts life within the bubble,?said Shakir Husain, a software entrepreneur who set up Fashionist as against the Taliban, a satirical Facebook group that has acquired cult status in Pakistani social media. nd that bubble is filled with self-congratulatory nonsense.?

The magazine is the latest assertion of a fizzy celebrity culture that has thrived in Pakistan in the past decade despite political turmoil and extremist violence. Glossy society magazines have sold well, showing well-heeled Pakistanis at lavish parties, weddings and charity balls, usually with their glasses of wine or whiskey discreetly hidden. The most famous is named ood Times.?

The glamour, meanwhile, comes from the fashion industry. Designers anchor the celebrity party scene, while models, who can earn $1,Article Biz_What To Wear Under Your Wedding Dress!,000 a night on the catwalk, showcase sexy clothes and provide daring eye-candy in a country where public displays of flesh are frowned upon.


The models are also a source of tabloid fodder: one, Veena Malik, caused an uproar this year when she appeared mostly naked on the cover of an Indian men magazine, with the initials I. S. I., for Pakistan top spy agency, tattooed on one arm.

ive us a break,?said Deepak Perwani, a prominent designer, at Fashion Pakistan Week, which drew Karachi trendy set over four nights in April. ee nice people.?

But championing the rich and glamorous can be controversial in a country with a dizzying social gulf and a flailing economy; where much wealth stems from inheritance,Gucci,, corruption or contacts; and where the top tier of society is notoriously bad at paying its fair share of taxes or,Monster Beats By Dre,, indeed, any taxes at all.

The debate was embodied by one of the hottest fashion labels, Sana Safinaz, after it ran billboard advertisements in March that showed aging train porters ?still known by the colonial term oolie??holding Louis Vuitton luggage for a lithe model in flowing dress. ow Uncoolie?read one headline.

Then Hello! Pakistan interviewed the brand two designers at a luxurious seaside mansion; one, Safinaz Muneer, boasted how employees could spend 1,500 hours embroidering a dress hat will cost you nothing.?

To critics, it reflected the tone-deaf sensibilities of an increasingly disconnected elite ?two years earlier, another designer told a reporter how she had wept hen my tailors formed a union and I had to fire them all.?

But the designers were unrepentant; in a backstage interview at the Karachi fashion show, Ms. Muneer struck back at her critics.

storm in an elitist teacup,?she said, as models draped in her latest designs prepared to step onto the runway. ell me, what have these critics contributed??

And the controversy did no harm to business. Her collection of lawn, diaphanous cotton used to make traditional summer dresses, now a fashion sensation, sold out within hours. It was a sign, fashion insiders say, that their industry is breaking out of the celebrity straitjacket, and into the middle-class mainstream.

It is crossing borders, too: the lawn craze has spread to India, where a sale in New Delhi over the spring led to frantic scenes of competitive shopping.

Meanwhile, Pakistan fashion fraternity has split into rival camps, based in Lahore and Karachi ?a sign of the country fractious political culture, certainly, but also of a business with growing financial stakes.

ashion shows used to be just about entertainment, but that has changed,?said Maheen Khan, a veteran designer who provided embroidery for the set design of the recent Hollywood movie now White and the Huntsman.?he bubble has burst.?


Yet the cultural merit of the fashion-fuelled celebrity boom is contentious, because its prominence stems from the withering of other forms of expression.

While Bollywood dominates Indian pop culture, Pakistan movie business has been crushed by Islamic nationalists. Traditional South Asian dances, deemed n-Islamic?by conservatives, have waned. Pakistani writers have excelled abroad, yet struggled to gain widespread recognition at home. The threat of Islamist violence has stymied pop concerts and sports events.

The resulting vacuum, said Faiza Sultan Khan, a literary editor and critic, has pulled Pakistanis in conflicting directions ?toward religion or Western-style consumerism.

onsumerism has become the art form,Beats By Dre Studio,, and fashion is responding to that,?she said. hat what happens when you have a society with no shared culture.?

So far, Hello! Pakistan has struck a middle course between good works and glamour. The first three issues featured the actor Sean Penn talking about flood relief, fashionistas in slinky dresses discussing Louboutin shoes, and photos of a horse-mounted ISI general galloping up the polo field.

Ms. Sultan Khan, the literary critic, said the magazine should concentrate on what Hello! does best ?celebrity tittle-tattle and glowing photography. he idea that it should be about Pakistan image irritates me,?she said. t not as if the scores who die violently every day are perishing from our bad image.?

Ms. Khan,louis vuitton purses,, the publisher,Article Snatch_Gucci Purses Outlet The Require For, said the sales figures ?a healthy 15,000 copies per issue ?spoke for themselves. t easy to sit in a drawing room and bitch about everything that has gone wrong with Pakistan. Youe got to do your part.?

Others expressed a more complex position: uncomfortable with the reality that Hello! portrays but, in a country shadowed by dark forces of intolerance, glad that it simply exists.

he rich inhabit a parallel reality everywhere, although in Pakistan their opulence seems excessive because the middle class is so stunted,?said Moni Mohsin, a writer who specializes in social satire. ut if it was a stark choice between life in the pages of Hello! or as Osama bin Laden would have wanted it, I go for Hello! It might drive me mad, but everyone has a right to a party.?br>