GOING LOONY FOR LAWN

You  are roaming around the market, you are waiting to spot and find the perfect lawn print of your dreams, you are keen, anxious, eager and what not, to find it suddenly something comes before your eyes, you want to get your hands on it, yes yes it is the lawn print you have been waiting for, you almost run like a predator  to  reach the shop to touch it, ohhh its such a such a oh leave it an unexplainable feeling, you touch the fabric and it makes you sigh with happiness, your adrenaline pumps, you have got to wear it , you have already started to visualize that  dress on you, its design, how well it looks on you, and suddenly reality strikes you when some one around you asks the prize of that lawn suit, which leaves you flabbergasted, its only 1700 or so, then another slab of reality falls over you when you see that the lawn fabric is thin to max. All your hopes and ideas fizzle out. Its summer time and you are bound to get a few lawn suits to wear in summers, but the prizes are talking to the skies, the fabric and price both are not at all hand in glove, prices have soared all time high, and now the brands have also descended the market. The mediocre consumer is in a dilemma they want to buy a branded lawn suit, but there need is to buy a reasonably prized lawn suit, even now the reasonable prize is not at all sober and affordable.

It’s making me crazy, my mind has stopped working after getting to know the prices of normal brand’s normal print suit which turned out to be 1000, if we even think of buying it hemorrhages my brain, expressed Mehmooda Begam a housewife with an anguished frown. The quality is at the worst of all times, even if the print is liked by me, but the quality of the fabric leaves me disgusted, paper thin is a understated word for the quality of the suit, specially the shalwar is paper thin, how are we supposed to walk around with such a shalwar on .In my opinion no one in a sane state of mind will buy such a membranous suit with a high price. 

Nazahat Fatima student of Hamdard University seconds the thought of Mehmooda Begum, that the fabric is indeed thin, according to her Gul ahmed’s fabric is the thinnest of all, but she believes and follows the rule, survival of the prettiest when it comes to lawn, she said that she would always go for the print whether it would cost her a penny or would leave a dent on her pocket, Print is her mantra she is loving the collection of prints of Firdous and Sana Safinaz is her all time favorite brand. Nazahat also complained about the prices which are of the height of Burj ul Arab, a shirt piece in the past would cost her form 300-450, but now the price of a shirt piece starts from 500, which she believes is quite flustering.

Oh believe me, there is hard competition among middle class wives to get the best and the most expensive lawn among her group of peers, and especially on those women who daily pick their kids up from the schools, Mrs. Umaima Ansari stated, where as her husband chimed in that, such husband faces even thousand tone more pressure when their wives lawns expenditure starts up, “some times we just feel like running away and away and keep running away”, he believes that it has become almost impossible to make a variety of clothes, before in the same amount of money summer dresses of his kids and wife were an easy target, but now the finish line of this target seems blurred.

Abdul Rehman, who has been in the cloth business for the past 15 years sorrows over the fact that this summer season till now has been the worst for his business, the number of buyers have declined where the rates of every thing, electricity, gas, labor, entrance of new designer brands and every thing has skyrocketed which is also one of the main reason of in hike of lawn suits prices, ”now our sales are not what they used be in the previous year, the middle class’ hands have been tied by this inflation so tightly that they can not think of buying more than 1 or more than, the tension that erupts on their faces when they get to know the prices is quite hard for them to hide. Where as another retailer disagrees with Abdul Rehman and says that even the middle class is getting as much lawn as they want, its just some don’t buy it and some does not.

These branded lawn suits are only affordable for a certain group of people, hardly any bourgeois can imagine wearing a branded lawn suit, even I believe wearing them in imagination would cost us a bomb, it was much easier for us to buy lawn suits before, but now we have got to choose between our summer dresses or our kids’, explained Arsala Naz. The marketing strategies of the designer brand is so well, they are almost in every corner of the city, every bill board has been taken over by them to lure the mango people, it confuses us what to do what not to do, she also stated that her teenage daughter of 17 years indirectly tries to cajole her parents to buy her at least one branded lawn, only because certain friends of her flaunt their branded lawn.

Shaneela Shah who lives in America, comes down to Pakistan every summer to get lions share of lawn suits, but this year she experienced a vast difference in terms of marketing and the competition that’s started in the lawn business, she believes that lawn itself alone has become a separate and to look out in future business, but she also complains about the price she says that after buying a branded lawn dress of 3000-4000, we have to take out extra money to get it stitched perfectly and accordingly to the latest design and all, but after all the extra hard work and money it will always be called a lawn suit, which can not be worn at a party or something because at last its going to remain lawn.

Syed Ibrahim, who has been a sales man at Gul Ahmed for the past 6 years explained that, the recent rise in inflation of the cause that the price of our fabric has gone up, but he stresses over the point that quality and life of the fabric remains satisfactory and as far as the sheerness of the dress specially the shalwar is concerned, that mainly happens because the price of thread has also gotten out of the reach of big companies a little bit it is 4 times higher than now, we do have to cut down at some place, but before getting it stitched if the fabric is put in water the sheerness disappears to a certain limit. And lawn is worn to beat the heat and if you are going to put lining under that the dress will get thicker and uncomfortable. He also said that this year due to the new bandwagon of brands has given us a rather tight competition, now people have more option to choose from.

Oscar Wilde many years back once said:

‘Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation?  I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.’ 

And lawn has now become such a temptation.