For years, the calendar of Pakistani fashion had sat unnervingly empty. The showcase of fashion weeks, once the barometer of ambition and artistry, vanished. In its place came only the noise of retail launches, sporadic solo shows, lawn campaigns, and the relentless monotony of sales. The absence was not just of events, but of imagination. What should have been a stage for experi-mentation, dialogue, and the shaping of culture became a transactional marketplace where racks and discounts replaced risk and narrative. The runway, which once offered designers the chance to stage both beauty and critique, was abandoned.
Fashion’s Real Comeback
This prolonged silence grad-ually turned the industry insular. Retail grew, but fashion shrank. Clothes were sold, but dialogue around them remained absent. The very purpose of a fashion week — bringing together dis-parate forces into one cohesive moment of storytelling — was lost. In countries where fashion weeks continued to thrive, the events became not just comm-ercial drivers but cultural markers. They reminded the world of the role fashion plays in reflecting and shaping society.
Paris, Milan, New York, and London remained at the heart of the global industry precisely because they nurtured that mix of spectacle and commerce. Pakistan, by contrast, receded from the conversation, leaving its designers to operate in fragmented isolation. Could it really afford to?
It is in this vacuum that the announcement of LAAM Fashion Week (LFW), set for January 2026 in Lahore, arrives. It is not just another addition to the roster of events, but a necessary redefinition of what fashion in Pakistan could and should be. The return of a fashion week in itself is a notable development. Yet what makes this announ-cement compelling is that it is not a mere revival of the old format — it is a transformation of the runway’s purpose.
Fashion’s Real Comeback
By integrating technology into its DNA, the platform promises to transform the runway from an ephemeral showcase into a retail engine. Every look that walks its stage will, for the first time in Pakistan, be instantly shoppable through a dedicated platform. Applause will no longer dissolve into memory, and visibility will no longer be limited to social media reels. The spectacle will have permanence, accessibility, and commercial consequence. What better way to remind audiences that fashion is both art and industry, both dream and demand?
This evolution matters because fashion weeks are more than glamorous gatherings. At their best, they are the archi-tecture of an ecosystem. They compel designers, stylists, textile houses, artisans, media, and buyers to operate not as isolated actors but as a collective. They create a rhythm, a discipline, and a performance that turns clothes into culture.
For six years, the absence of such a forum allowed fragmen-tation to settle in. Brands comp-eted for consumer attention only through seasonal drops or influencer-heavy retail camp-aigns. LFW’s return, backed by both vision and infrastructure, restores the sense that Pakistani fashion is not just about selling but also about shaping identity.
What lends this initiative weight is the coalition behind it. LAAM — with its 3.5 million monthly users and global logistics capacity — has already established itself as the largest South Asian fashion discovery platform. Its reach spans 120 countries, turning South Asian fashion into a visible and purchasable reality for millions abroad.
By joining hands with Design651, whose founder, Saad Ali, has produced over twenty fashion weeks in Pakistan, LFW inherits both credibility and curatorial depth. Add to this HSY as Event Director, Nabila and N-Gents as official style partners, and the celebrated Maheen Kardar guiding designer curation — and the structure reveals itself not as an experiment but as a serious bid to place Pakistan back on the global stage.
“The world’s major fashion weeks are not only about displaying clothes. They are about driving billions of dollars in media impact, export revenue, and cultural positioning. Designers gain visibility that translates into boutiques, collaborations, and global stockists. Models, stylists, and creatives are launched into international careers. Media houses gain content that sustains fashion journalism.”
The cultural implications are equally powerful. In the absence of fashion weeks, much of fashion’s storytelling muscle atrophied. Retail campaigns, however polished, cannot deliver the provocation or imagination that a runway allows. A fashion week is not only about hemlines and silhouettes, it is about positioning. It is where designers can turn fabric into commentary — on heritage, rebellion, romance, or politics. Without it, the cultural capital of fashion erodes, reducing creativity to mere consumption. By staging LFW as a biannual, globally scalable platform, the industry is being reminded of its own potential — that fashion can inspire as much as it can sell, and that both functions strengthen rather than cancel each other out.
The logic of global fashion underscores this. The world’s major fashion weeks are not only about displaying clothes. They are about driving billions of dollars in media impact, export revenue, and cultural positioning. Designers gain visibility that translates into boutiques, colla-borations, and global stockists. Models, stylists, and creatives are launched into international careers. Media houses gain content that sustains fashion journalism. Pakistan has lacked this ecosystem for too long. This gap has not only constrained designers but also weakened all the adjacent industries that thrive in its orbit.
By fusing runway and e-commerce, LFW has the potential to bring Pakistan’s ecosystem back into alignment, giving each stakeholder a renewed stake in its success. Can a single platform restore mom-entum to an entire industry? If done right, perhaps it can.
Technology is the fulcrum of this vision. While the grandeur of the runway attracts headlines, it is the integration of AI-driven personalisation, data-backed logistics, and Laam’s fulfilment infrastructure that provides the real muscle. For designers, this means bypassing the prohibitive costs of setting up global retail networks. For artisans, it means new avenues to showcase craft traditions to audiences far beyond local bazaars or niche boutiques. For consumers, it collapses the distance between desire and purchase, turning what was once an exclusive front-row privilege into an accessible, global experience.
The rhetoric behind LFW’s ‘Made in Pakistan, Worn by the World’ is not just a slogan. It is a reframing of ambition. For too long, Pakistani fashion has been content with domestic validation, satisfied by seasonal retail highs but absent from international conversations. At a time when South Asian fashion is becoming increasingly visible on global stages, Pakistan has risked being overshadowed by its neighbours.
Could this finally be the moment when Pakistani fashion stops playing catch-up and starts setting the agenda?
Positive energy runs through this promise. The return of fashion weeks means the return of collaboration, cross-polli-nation, and collective growth. It reintroduces glamour, but also discipline. It restores pride in an industry that, despite its challenges, remains one of the country’s most vibrant cultural forces. And it reminds audiences that fashion is not trivial, but rather a mirror of society, an expression of aspiration, and, at its best, a driver of change.
The months ahead, however, will matter. Execution will determine whether LFW be-comes a defining institution or a fleeting experiment. Yet the ambition is undeniable. It is ambitious not only in scale but also in spirit. It refuses to allow Pakistani fashion to remain confined to the limits of seasonal sales. The involvement of established names, the embrace of digital innovation, and the clarity of its global positioning make this a moment of possi-bility. And if possibility is the first step towards transformation, then what follows could be extraordinary.
When the lights go up in Lahore in January 2026, it will not simply mark the resurgence of a long-missed event. It will be the staging of a new narrative — that Pakistani fashion is ready to stop waiting for relevance and is prepared instead to define it on its own terms.
After long years of absence, the runway is back. And with it, the possibility that Pakistan’s fashion story, too long paused, can once again be written in bold, ambitious strokes.
Viva La Moda!