A Post Fashion Week Weekend

 

 Spectre, Tamasha, a very ‘haute’ dinner hosted by Nasreen Askari at the Mohatta Palace Museum and last but not least, some jaw-breaking comedy by Saad Haroon and Salman Qureshi at the PACC Auditorium…this was an extremely busy and yet charged and revitalising weekend!

Yes, this is exactly how one recovers from Fashion Week!

Nasreen Askari, director Mohatta Palace Museum and Frieha Altaf.

“It’s tragic that we’re a country that can produce couture and yet we’re letting it all waste away,” Rizwan Beyg did not mince his words or his disappointment at how commercial, fast fashion, pret and a compromise on quality had jeopardized all the gorgeous craft that is indigenous to this region. Nilofer Shahid and Faiza Samee, also from the same school of revivalist thought, chimed in and they had a point. This conversation unraveled at the Mohatta Palace Museum, at an intimate and exclusive dinner hosted by Nasreen Askari. This was a conversation that has to be elaborated in a separate story.

x (R-L) Maheen Khan, Tapu Javeri and Ather Hafeez at the Mohatta Palace.

It was a beautiful evening, with some of the industry’s stalwarts like Rizwan, Faiza, Nilofer and Maheen Khan present amongst other luminaries. It was held to celebrate the success of the A Flower From Every Meadow exhibition. The backdrop was majestic, the weather was crisp and the hospitality – an all-Sindhi menu – was delicious. The company, needless to say, brought it all together;

Don’t Jealous Jani, I am Pakistani, I sheepishly have to admit, was my first experience of Saad Haroon live and, I also have to say, his You Tube videos do him no justice at all. Saad’s routine was hilarious, poking fun at all the clichés of being Pakistani, from applying for foreign visas to every Pakistani teenager’s Mission Impossible: dating. There was a lot of improvisation, drawing in the crowd present, and it all unrolled so naturally that it could have been orchestrated if we didn’t know better. It was hilarious and the only drawback was that my jaw hurt at the end of the 90-minute program.

Saad Haroon (L) with a fan

A new name to Pakistan, Salman Qureshi – visiting from Dubai – opened the act for Saad and his ‘desi in Dubai’ plus ‘lets-make-fun-of-the-Saudis’ routine was very welcome. We just don’t make enough fun of the Saudis, obviously! The show has been such a hit that a day has been added to the schedule and you can catch it tomorrow too.

Over to the movies, I thoroughly enjoyed Spectre and Tamasha. Spectre, simply because Daniel Craig is my favourite Bond these days and I fail to understand how anyone can resist the eye candy, whether it’s the cars, the Tom Ford suits, the style or the entire suaveness of the world’s favourite spy. Tamasha was not as enjoyable as I had hoped – the childhood flashbacks were quite painful – but then Ranbir Kapoor’s performance made up for anything. He is brilliant and handles the film’s story effortlessly. Deepak is simply lovely, from the way she looks to the depth she carries in her performance. Unlike most Bollywood actresses nowadays, she is not just a shallow, pretty face.