LAWN MANIA!

Come summers and the city is painted red with banners announcing the lawn exhibitions by one designer or the other. City pages of newspapers bear huge ads announcing the date, time and the five-star venue of the new ‘lawn’ exhibition by such and such designer. Go to a coffee party where all the ladies are gathered and you feel like you’ve stepped on the red carpet. The first person you meet will ask you: What are you wearing? Don’t be surprised. She is not from another planet unable to make out that you are wearing a lawn shalwar kamez. What she is asking is the question anchors ask on the red carpet of fashion galas or at Oscars. You need only to have done your home work to know the name of your designer; not the tailor, mind you, who has stitched your suit but the Pakistani designer who is only designing lawn prints now. ‘It’s Sana Safinaz’ or ‘Maria B’, ‘Sobia Nazeer’ or ‘Vaneeza, Junaid Jamshaid’ or ‘Yasir Waheed’, you answer promptly.
Suddenly these lawn fabric exhibitions have become the latest status symbol of the elite of Pakistan. Every year a bunch of new lawn designers appears on the scene. Designers only known to the elite class are now household names whether they are affordable or not. The designers come up with their new lawn prints at the start of spring and sell only at exhibitions held on certain dates at five star hotels. These four or five days of exhibitions, jam packed with women who come in hordes to buy the latest designs, are quite a sight. Sometimes one can’t even get to touch the material before it is sold to the next customer in line.
The three-piece suits by these so-called designers are all over priced and repetitive too. They are not exclusive and certainly not worth the two or three thousand rupees asked for. The cheapest possible lawn suit will cost around Rs. 1,200, while those with a bit of embroidery or of a costlier brand go over Rs. 3,000. In a country where the GST might soon clamber to 20 per cent, how are women chasing lawn as if their life depended on it?
Watching these hordes of women with their uncontrollable buying urge can, indeed, be quite interesting. Pakistani lawn is superb but it’s becoming more and more expensive every year. Every woman ends up wearing the same print which is usually what happens with most brands. Then the print loses its value.

Although in the scorching afternoons and warm nights, lawn is the only fabric which can bearably be worn, you can always try the cheaper options!!