About

An Urdu word chosen because anyone can say it, whatever language they speak. The definition did the rest.

WHY IT EXISTS

In 2021 I was working a corporate job in London. No fashion background, no fashion school, just a habit of designing things.

I kept looking for clothes that carried my culture and were actually good. What I found was a hoodie with PAKISTAN across the chest, or a flag on a t-shirt. Basic, tired, and everywhere. Unless you were spending serious money, nobody was making everyday clothes that took Pakistani heritage seriously.

So I made some.

The first was a heavyweight hoodie. A friend of mine wearing a Saleeqa balaclava with a keffiyeh wrapped over the top, the way it is worn back home. Another friend painted it. I scanned the painting and printed it.

It was called Aghaaz. Beginning.

East in the design, west in the wearing. That has been the shape of it ever since.

ON URDU

This is the part I keep coming back to.

People wear French across their chest without speaking a word of it. Chinese characters they have never translated. Nobody hesitates.

Urdu carries something else here. A stigma it never earned, built out of what people have been shown rather than what it actually is, which is one of the most poetic languages there is.

I want it worn the same way. Freely, by anyone, whatever their age, background or belief. Worn by all.

MARKING HISTORY

1947. The Miracle of '92. The Lawyers' Movement.

My parents lived through these. I did not, but I grew up around them, and I noticed how rarely they come up anywhere else. Pakistan has enormous history that gets left out of the conversation.

So the clothes mark it. The Lahore High Court on a chest. A newspaper excerpt on judicial independence across a back. A bird's eye view of a final a country still talks about.

Not nostalgia. Archive.

EXPLORE HERITAGE

HOW THEY ARE MADE

Made in Portugal, in 240 gsm organic cotton. I sourced the manufacturer myself, because quality is the thing that either backs up everything else or quietly undermines it.

In the early days my mum labelled every garment by hand. She was a tailor, and I did not have the access or the resources to get it done any other way. It is part of the supplier process now, but it started at home, on a kitchen table, with her doing it.

SO FAR

The Ivory Seam Jacket went further than I expected it to. The Miracle of '92 has sold out five times.

At pop-ups, people buy a tank and change into it there and then, out of whatever they put on that morning. That one still gets me.

The messages that mean the most are the ones that say my mum loves it, or that it is good to finally see something Pakistani that is not basic. That was the whole reason I started.

SAMAR

Founder. London. Started 2021, in a corporate job, still designing.

Next: worldwide, and in stores you can walk into.