Style, stylish, stylist

The very first thing you will notice about Tabesh Khoja is what he’s wearing. The man has an eye for putting looks together, so it’s very fortunate that he found a career as a stylist. It is what he describes as an innate talent, and he is very earnest as he says, “I believe my eye for style and faces is a gift from God”.

You might think that this is a very dramatic statement for someone working in the fashion industry, but if you really think about it, look at the body of work he has collected over the years, and then his own style, you’ll have to agree with him.

“You can dress as avant-garde as you want, but you also have to know where to hit pause,” he says. “For Eid, I wore something from Elan’s ready-to-wear collection, and everyone thought I was wearing a custom-made outfit,” he says. Khoja balanced the floral print with a black scarf, and sensible black slip-ons; he practises what he preaches.

For the most part, Khoja works with Nabila Maqsood, Pakistan’s foremost makeup artist, and one of the pioneers of the beauty-meets-fashion industry. He has recently made partner in Zinc, the modelling agency that falls under the umbrella of Nabila’s businesses, and that is the second part of his job, which perhaps flies a little more under the radar, but is actually more important.

In 2021, Khoja, radiant as he took pictures on the Lux Style Awards red carpet, had more than one reason to be happy. The first was, model and friend Sachal Afzal was wearing an ensemble that Khoja put together with a one-line brief: tribute to Lollywood. Afzal wore a dhoti and kurta, designed and accessorized by YBQ Design Studio. The outfit got a lot of attention, and despite being a nod to the closest thing Pakistan has to a superhero, Maula Jatt, was very red-carpet-appropriate. As he hugged his other friend, Sarah Zulfiqar, Khoja beamed with pride. He has done more than dress up the two models (and others), that night: he was the one who had discovered Sarah, and with one styling tip, had won Afzal major attention during fashion week a few years earlier. And that night, both carried home trophies in the modelling categories.

“I think I have a knack for picking out faces that will do well, and also how to capture them correctly,” says Khoja. Apart from Sarah Zulfiqar, whom he had spotted in a restaurant and offered a modelling job to, Khoja also had Sachal Afzal shave off a lush beard, drawing more attention to his bone structure, and found Maha Taherani at the salon, having her makeup done for her brother’s wedding.

“I remember once i took Fahmeen Ansari’s pictures on my phone and sent them off to different people, and she got inundated with work soon after,” he says.

In fact, if you look back at the new faces who have emerged in modelling over the last few years, you’ll find a lot of Tabesh Khoja discoveries. To loosely paraphrase Salvador Dali on drugs, Tabesh Khoja doesn’t just work in fashion, he is fashion.

In the last decade or so, since he became part of Nabila’s team, Khoja has seen multiple fashion weeks, hundreds of editorials, and styled celebrities and models. When he envisions a particular look (“I know what I want to see, and I may not be able to construct it myself, but I can ask a designer to do it”), that he wants to play with for a shoot, he will simply match up idea to designer, and have a capsule designed. Khoja did this most recently with Adnan Pardesy, whom he had build a denim collection for a shoot, because he wanted to work with the diversity of looks one can create with the very hardy fabric.

But it doesn’t always have to be complex or time-consuming. A couple of months ago Khoja headed to the beach with Sachal Afzal in a white kurta, and photographer Hamza Tariq for a quick shoot. “You don’t always need a lot of styling, or art, or equipment to create a good editorial,” he says, “sometimes all you need is an idea and enthusiasm.”

But ideas, says Khoja, are running out fast, or being ignored within Pakistan’s fashion industry.

“Look, if you serve it, they’ll eat it,” he says. “Designers saying they make what they do because that’s what their clientele likes aren’t being entirely fair, their clients are buying what they are selling.

“There was a point in time when fashion was innovating, if not constantly, then at least at a regular pace. You had your big guns like Rizwan Beyg, Maheen Khan; then there was Shehla Chatoor, Nomi Ansari, Kamiar Rokni, Maheen Kardar, then Ali Xeeshan, Fahad Hussayn, Mohsin Tawwasuli. My point is, these were all different eras in fashion, but in each era, we had designers who created trends, who communicated them to the masses through editorial shoots and shows, not simply following a trend or digging their heels into one aesthetic.”

Khoja agrees that the economy has a large part to play in how things within fashion are done now - “everyone wants to work in fashion, and when they start working in fashion, they want to sustain themselves, so they must sell.” - but argues that a couple of simple steps can actually move things along.

“What we are currently passing for fashion is bridals, and bridals aren’t exactly high fashion,” he says. “You can’t have a bridal wear show and reframe it as a ‘fashion week’. And even there, one can’t distinguish between designers, because all bridal couture has become the same!”

But of course, there is innovation in fashion, and there are brands that do push the envelope. But these are smaller, high-street brands, says Khoja. And historically, the little guy can either continue making a superior product without much profit, or they can cut cost and quality. A lot of brands with promise that crop up, become dormant just as quickly without capital to sustain them, or guidance to the right business and creative channels.

Khoja feels there is a solution: “if there were a fashion council, these smaller brands would have the help they need,” he says. “But everyone needs to put their differences aside so they can sit on one table.”

The problem, says the stylist, is also two councils, and two fashion weeks, which as we of course know, are down to one inactive council, and no fashion weeks. “Why can’t we just have the one council and one fashion week?” he asks.

The answer to this comes from him as well. It isn’t the famous Karachi-Lahore divide anymore, he says, it is just a designer divide, which sounds plausible, but don’t all designers cater to different clients?

Not so, says Khoja. “Everyone’s clients are the same now.”

So instead of experimenting to diversify, or actually being trendmakers, designers try to outdo each other within the same aesthetic parameters. The outcome is lose-lose, both for fashion and buyer, because no one gets anything new, while the industry stagnates further.

“And don’t you think as creatives, we should know what to drop, and what to carry forward,” he says. “I know that while working in fashion, I want to keep pushing and challenging myself, and carrying my values with me into my work.

“For instance, one thing I promote is being okay with who you are and how you look. There is a lot of colorism in Pakistan, where darker-skinned women are considered less attractive. Which, how can they be, since this is a very desi skin tone?”

And he walks the walk. Despite the LSA red carpets, the fashion weeks and IIFAs, one of Tabesh Khoja’s favorite projects to date is a cover shot and editorial he created with some of Pakistan’s top models, all of whom are decidedly what Pakistanis refer to as ‘wheatish’.

 Khoja’s journey to this point, where he feels he is comfortable with what he’s doing and how he’s doing it may have started with him working as a paralegal for his uncle because he didn’t want to wear the clothes his mother bought him, has been quite steady,and if we are to go by the evidence thus far, promises great things in the future too.

“If you serve it, they’ll eat it,” he says. “Designers saying they make what they do because that’s what their clientele likes aren’t being entirely fair, their clients are buying what they are selling. There was a point in time when fashion was innovating, if not constantly, then at least at a regular pace. From Rizwan Beyg to Nomi Ansari and Kamiar Rokni, to Ali Xeeshan, Fahad Hussayn, Mohsin Tawwasuli were all different eras in fashion. But in each era, we had designers who created trends, who communicated them to the masses through editorial shoots and shows; they weren’t simply following a trend or digging their heels into one aesthetic.”