Zayn Malik taps into his Pakistani lineage

“My family is from Pakistan, so having artwork in Urdu has huge significance to me,” Zayn Malik spoke to Vogue about his new fashion line, customized after his debut album, Mind of Mine. The introductory items in the line feature two distinct words: Mind (zehen) and Mine (referring to Zayn himself). The two words look similar in Urdu and do create exotic imagery; it’s always interesting to wear words in scripts we can’t read, case in point being Sanskrit, Madarin and Arabic, some of the popular languages incorporated in fashion.

There is hardly a celebrity left in the world who doesn’t have their own fashion line; some we love and others we have chosen to ignore. And Zayn, with super model Gigi Hadid on one arm (and the Versace robot arm he wore to the Met Gala this year on the other), is no stranger to fashion. His fashion line isn’t too original; it’s predominantly black and white and sporty but it borrows its success from his stardom. It would have been hard for him to go wrong.

“The 23-piece range features T-shirts, tops and bomber jackets decorated with a melange of Zayn-specific imagery, from selfies to Urdu script and, yep, more metal-inspired fonts,” Sara Ilyas writes in Guardian. “Inspired by vintage band T-shirts, Malik has enlisted the help of Mark Wilkinson, the artist behind the artwork for Iron Maiden’s last record, to create a T-shirt that depicts him as a renegade escaping from a burning city.” The burning city could be a metaphor for his departure from One Direction or, seeing it from a Pakistani perspective, it could be an allusion to his roots. The burning city does look a lot like Karachi.

“I wanted to approach this as an opportunity to extend my ideas as an artist, and to give fans another facet of who I am,” Zayn explained.

The collection is available on zaynmalikstore.com with prices starting from $30. As expected, some are already sold out!