Colourism has always been a problem in the fashion industry and looks like Pakistani fashion industry is also weathering a storm of colourism.
Pakistan's fashion and textile sector is the 8th largest exporter of textile commodities in Asia and with fashion becoming huge, the issue of colourism has started finding foot in the 'land of pure'.
Country's leading fashion designer, Zara Shahjahan's latest fashion campaign has become a victim of colourism and the fiery designer has not taken it lightly. She has hit out at all the trolls, calling them out for their discrimination based on skin colour.
To cut a long story short, Zara had organised a fashion shoot in Turkey recently with some Mexican models who looked South Asian, and the shoot didn't go well with Pakistani trolls who called these models all sorts of names.
The designer took to Instagram to hit out at the sad episode of prejudice and wrote, "Let’s talk about these pictures. So I had a shoot in turkey. My team left a day earlier and the day me and the model had to leave, Turkey announced 15 days of quarantine. We were left with no choice but to hire models from there. I tried to find girls who look south Asian and finally found these two very stunning Mexican models who flew from LA for the campaign. We were very happy, the campaign look really beautiful and we launched, but what happened after is quite disturbing. These pictures started getting a lot of hate. “They look like maids” is one comment which disturbed me the most. Are we these people ? Why do we want the models to be white and sultry? Thankgod for my loyal customers who know my brand and the collection was sold out but I don’t seem to get the irritation of a lot of women to these two pictures."
Shahjahan's Instagram post has since then garnered a lot of support from educated Pakistanis and people from other South Asian countries. The forward thinking community has tried to support the designer's stance against prejudiced standards that look down upon women with darker skin tones.
