After eight

After eight


By Aamna Haider Isani

When the sun bows out, it's time for the stars to shine bright. The feeling of satiated luxury, the taste of magnificence, and the bolt from the blue, unveiled from a mysterious black wrapper is what it is all about. Glamour!

Though bad taste is in these days, Pakistani cinema is dead. One tolerable film a year, be it Yeh Dil Aap Ka Hua, Larki Punjaban or Salakhain, does not make an industry. It's over and out. Now it should either be buried, prayed upon for redemption or better, it should be cremated, it's ashes floated into the muddy Ravi.

The legacy it leaves behind, however, is scary: a list of aging heroines searching for what they consider the next best thing, be it on television, music or fashion; be it Reema, Resham or Meera. They may have been lucky enough to be touched by Shahzad Raza's magic wand, but to be aesthetically palatable they need a miracle.

But this is not about flogging a dead horse, God forbid! It's just high time there was a voice to unite the best and show the door to the rest: no power play, politics or pressure involved. I mean, really, will someone ever get down to cleansing the runways of unwanted elements? I say "out" to all aging actresses who believe the best way to succeed is to marry money or use patrons to become a part of the "style world" as a springboard to 'higher aspirations'. Tell me, is it just a rumour that Kiran is charging 80,000 dirhams for a performance (?) ever since she danced at the LSA in Dubai? You're probably wondering 'Kiran who'?

With Resham allegedly marrying Bhatti we're free of one big obstacle. She was, after all, the only one with a figure fit for the ramp. Let her now be lured by the catwalks of Paris. Meera's a different dialect altogether, a pretty face but one with a map of Lahore's walled city stuck to it. Reema can learn all the English she wants, but boy, does she look big in the Pepsi commercial! As far as commercials go, corporations can be blinded by mass appeal (pardon the pun) but the fashion industry should and does have better aesthetics.

An acute famine of fresh faces has encouraged choreographers to introduce celebrities to the runways. The problem is, not all of them can make clothes look good. Remember Waseem Akram in the Lawrencepur show? Not left with much choice, here enter the brainwaves for deconstruction and reinvention of what we have.

Vinnie achieved with meningitis what Aaminah managed only with liposuction: a drastic loss of weight. Having returned from a long sun-drenched vacation, she looks better than ever - gloriously tanned, lithe and sporting a frisky new cut. Contrary to all rumours, Vinnie had not been diagnosed with cancer, nor had she tested positive for Aids. A painful brush with meningitis had her blood count low, she visited the hospital frequently and the rest is grapevine history.

Vinnie belongs to a dying breed of models who work in an acutely defined frame of professionalism. They have plans, they have principles, they have rules and they have inflexible price quotients. Unfortunately, not many are on this list, just a handful including Iraj, Aminah, Tanya and Iman. Now Iraj may be having problems getting bridal shoots thanks to her cropped hair, but the girl has spunk attitude. Aaminah may have met 'plastic fantastic' but she looks drop-dead gorgeous as a result. Tanya's too cultured to go wrong and Iman too sexy, though one does wish she'd diversify her look a bit. That about wraps it up.

ZQ's an all-rounder, but she took almost a decade to begin taking herself seriously and it may take us time, too. LSA means nothing. You must be wondering. Nadya Hussein? Sure she's tops on the runways but her photographs speak another language. Natasha Hussein? One look at Dil Mere, the new Ali Zafar video, is enough to see her as the next suffering starlet. Sunita: too sweet. Nadia Malik? Pretty, but not gorgeous enough to make up for lost height. The rest are not even worth a mention, not at least yet.

But while we're cribbing about lack of enough glamour, all those who attended Deepak Perwani's show sure got an overdose of it. I wasn't in town to attend, but everyone who did had the same thing to say: great show, no clothes. And the kiss! Boy, are people hyped up about that. To Iraj it may have been a gutsy declaration of preferences, but what about Ayesha? "Gorgeous women, shock value, so what?" she commented when I called her up. "If Britney and Madonna can do it then why can't we? Though it wasn't meant to be erotic." Well, if two women being intimate with each other isn't erotic then I wonder what is!

"It wasn't planned," said Freiha Altaf, who choreographed the show. "They were just directed to behave as they would in a club. "

And a final note while we're on brash interpretations (or misrepresentations) of fashion, one has to say that Anwer Maqsood's sense of humour needs a makeover, too.At the anniversary celebrations of an ad agency, a lot of his stage comedy was aimed at giving the industry a kick in the backside. Sure, we can take a joke, but comparing our models to the Manhattan skyline minus the Twin Towers was hitting below the belt, don't you think?