Lawn season begins

StyleFile

Lahore’s acclaimed designer Mahgul ventures into lawn.

Here’s a short horror story: lawn season is upon us. It feels surreal even to write it considering the last days of winter still linger. But, from teaser images on Instagram to a complete social media avalanche of behind the scenes shots and from campaigns currently being shot in locales varying from Rohtas Fort to Paris, there’s no denying the fact that we’re about to be smothered under yarns and yarns of our printed summer staple.

There’s no arguing that demand for designer lawn is booming and most of your major couturiers have finger in the pie but each year there are new contenders in town hoping to make their mark. But the market, despite having seemingly insatiable demand, is very specific about what works and what doesn’t, which in turn means that not all those who throw their hat in come out victorious.

It is pertinent here though to point out what makes a particular lawn collection a hit (at least in our reviews). There are the obvious factors: quality of material, pricing and print innovation but there are also more unquantifiable elements that add to its success; how coveted is the brand and does it have the wow factor to really engage a jaded consumer?

Getting all these tricky details right isn’t something every designer has been able to manage. It requires a fine balance between toeing the line and going beyond it without making it seem like something too high fashion and inaccessible. Keeping the pitfalls in mind, youngling brand Mahgul announced that they will be putting out their debut collection of lawn this year.

Our first reaction, in all honesty, was ‘Oh, God, not another.’ But considering that Mahgul has a reputation of being meticulous and unapologetically original, we were certainly intrigued and got in touch with the man who has all the answers, Amir Rashid, the business director of the brand.

“Look, we came into lawn for the same reason as we entered fashion, we wanted to change how people dress. Lawn is a staple, you have to wear it for the better part of the year and we’re at the verge of exhausting the appeal of this very versatile fabric. We want to give people a new perspective on lawn without taking them out of their comfort zone. It’s going to be very different from whatever else you’ve seen in the market and that truly was what our motivation for the collaboration with Al-Zohaib Textiles was,” Buzzy (Rashid’s moniker) explains.

Now that’s all good but call up any designer, newly launching or established and you’ll hear the same motivation, albeit reworded. Not all brands end up delivering on their promise though. What will genuinely set Mahgul lawn apart?

According to Buzzy, it’s the sheer attention to detail and the undoubtable originality of design that will ensure that their lawn doesn’t fall into typical commercial category. “Of course we’ve had to cater to commercial concerns. Birds, bees, animate objects can’t be featured in prints, the print itself has to be approachable and so does the colour palette but we’ve worked really hard on making it unique. Each print has been done in-house, created entirely out of the imagination of our designers, not taken from Pinterest or picked up from an obscure source on the Internet.

We’ve spent weeks and weeks on a single print, unlike what most of your major retails do, which is put out a print a day. We’ve let ideas incubate and refined them until Mahgul was ready to sign off on what was going to be produced. Furthermore, just the way we’ve laid out the prints is innovative. A lot of what I’m saying can only be proven when the prints come out obviously, but we’ve tried to really play with lawn and inject our aesthetic while being painted into a box,” he elaborates.

Knowing the brand and how dedicate they are to their craft, we are looking forward to their lawn. If they can justify all their pre-release claims through their collection, it’ll be a win-win for everyone including consumers and fashion aficionados.