Team Kluchit sits down with the amazing Kamiar Rokni to get an exclusive insight into his contributions towards Pakistan’s Fashion Industry, his life and much more. Read the whole article and find out how has his experience been so far!
Who is Kamiar Rokni? Kamiar Rokni is a person who is interested in the world around him. He is curious, he is creative and he has a lot of passion for what he does and what he believes in.
When did you realize that fashion designing is your true soul calling? I realized that fashion was the field for me at a very early age. I come from a very creative family and we were always surrounded by culture and art and people were always making something so the first thing that I was interested in as a young person was making clothes. It came to me literally at the age of seven.
It’s a tough day for every fashion designer, what makes you keep going on being creative every moment? As I said earlier, I have a lot of passion for what I do, I really believe in what I do, and I think that we have something to offer as far as the fashion industry is concerned in Pakistan, so that passion really drives us to keep going. Yes! It is a very competitive field but I feel that if you really believe in what you are doing and if you are very passionate about it then you have an edge over everyone else.
Is it a tough exercise to develop a design concept?? Or is it more like a divine intervention? It can really depend; sometimes it is like a divine intervention and an idea comes to you literally in a dream or from the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in order to develop something you have to really think about it, do your research and really delve deep into something in order for something to come out of it but it can go both ways.
How do you decide trends for upcoming seasons? Well, sometimes trends are decided for you, there is something in the air, it is a very illusive kind of thing, you know, a trend will just emerge and you will get inspired by something that is already existing and you’ll do your own version of it and sometimes you just forget about the concept of the trend and just simply create and out of those creations will appear and emerge trends. So some designers in that case just follow the herd and some need the herd.
A life of a fashion designer up front is very bright and shiny. Does this bling bling get into your personal life? I have a professional life and I have a personal life. My personal life is quite different from my professional appearance. I am really a people’s person but I don’t really enjoy being a celebrity so much. I am not really interested in being a celebrity. I am essentially a designer and a creative person and being a celebrity is a part of my job, it comes from the fame but I am not interested as such in being famous. So, sometimes it can be really challenging and hard work and sometimes you can really enjoy it. But yes, it’s not the kind of business that what you see is not necessarily what the reality is. There is a lot of blood, sweat and tears and a lot of hard work which create the image of this glamorous world.
Are you a social person? How hard it is to let go of an old time friendship? I was an extremely social person when I was younger but as I got older I have become slightly more quiet and slightly less social but I am lucky enough to have the gift of the gab. I am good at listening to people and talking to people and that can be a huge plus point in your work and not just in the world of fashion but in any professional sort of sphere. It is important to be able to communicate, that really helps with my job so I am lucky that way.
Is it tough exercise to develop a design concept…or is it more like a divine intervention? It can really depend; sometimes it is literally like a divine intervention and an idea comes to you literally in a dream or from the middle of nowhere or sometimes you have to develop something and really think about it and do your research and really delve deep into something in order for something to come out it but it can go both ways.
How do you decide trends for upcoming seasons? Well, sometimes trends are decided for you, there is something in the air, it is a very illusive kind of thing, you know, a trend will just emerge and you will get inspired by something that is already existing and you’ll do your own version of it and sometimes you just forget about the concept of the trend and just simply create and out of those creations will appear and emerge trends. So some designers in that case just follow the herd and some need the herd.
A life of fashion designer, up front, is very bright and shiny. Does this bling bling get into your personal life? I have a professional life and I have a personal life. My personal life is quite different from my professional appearance. I am really a people’s person but I don’t really enjoy being a celebrity so much. I am not really interested in being a celebrity. I am essentially a designer and a creative person and celebrity is a part of my job, it comes from the fame but I am not interested as such in being famous. So, sometimes it can be really challenging and hard work and sometimes you can really enjoy it. But yes, it’s not the kind of business that what you see is not necessarily what the reality is. There is a lot of blood, sweat and tears and a lot of hard work that creates the image of this glamorous world.
Are you a social person? How hard it is to let go of an old time friendship? I was an extremely social person when I was younger but as I got older I have become slightly more quiet and slightly less social but I am lucky enough to have the gift of the gab. I am good at listening to people and talking to people and that can be a huge plus point in your work and not just in the world of fashion but in any professional sort of sphere. It is important to be able to communicate, that really helps with my job so I am lucky that way.
Karma, was it meant to end the way it did from day one? The whole thing with Karma was that not enough thought was given by me to what I was doing when I decided to do it and therefore I think it had to end the way it did. Had I thought about myself more and about the whole thing a lot more clearly, I probably would have never even gotten into it.
There are many speculations about the break up, I’m sure your fans would love to know the true story behind it! There is a very famous quotation in English, it says that, “The past is another country”, that is all I would like to say.
While at PIFD, you were among the most talented batch ever. That batch had names like HSY, KARMA, Dittu and now yourself. How was it being among such creative people while learning the art of fashion itself? It was probably one of the best experiences of my life. Being in the Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design was an absolute pleasure because for the first time I was actually getting the proper education for what I really wanted to pursue in my life so generally my levels of energy and how much I wanted to invest in it was quiet high. Secondly, I was with people, as you mentioned, who were very talented and driven as well and that creates an environment of competitiveness, but competitiveness in a healthy way makes you excel so therefore I think we all egged each other on and it was a very good environment to be studying in because it made us do our best.
PIFD back then and PIFD now? What is the difference? It was a much smaller institute. It was a very personal homelike place because we were literally very close and very together. It was a very tightening place and now it is a very large institution with a very large student body so I am sure the experience is not so familiar but more like what a large college is like. Back in our days it literally felt like one big family.
What would you have been if not a fashion designer? You can speculate about what you are going to do in life but I think I would have been involved at some level in performing arts maybe, or maybe I would have been a writer or would have been a graphic designer or maybe I would have worked in the advertising industry, but it would have definitely been a creative field like maybe the media. Maybe I would have been doing what you are doing right now.
Where do you draw your inspiration from? Inspirations are always around us. I am always inspired by what I am reading, what I am seeing, what’s happening around me in the world. It is never one person or one thing but history inspires me. If I was to really narrow it down, you know, the past inspires me, the world of nature inspires me, different cultures in the world, they inspire me.
India vs. Pakistan – Sharing almost the same cultural palate, are we anywhere in the race when it comes to fashion from South Asia? India has a very very large fashion industry, just like their film industry and their film industry connects with their fashion industry and that creates an even larger platform. Also, it is a slightly less conservative society and people are a little bit more involved. Therefore, they are more adventurous with what they wear and the Indian designers have a bigger parameter within which they can work, create more interesting silhouettes and be a little bit more adventurous which leads to designs which look very captivating and appealing on the ramp. So that’s definitely their plus point but the negative point is that sometimes perhaps there is too much Bollywood. It can be beneficial to their industry but then there is also a little too much of it and their everyday clothing and traditional clothing can suffer from lack of quality. Pakistan has a plus point of being in the northern part of the subcontinent where the craft and the embroidery came from originally, therefore the quality of the embellishment in this part of the world is very superior and I feel that in terms of design, our uniqueness and our Muslim-ness add a certain creativity and a certain elegance to our silhouettes. But the negatives are that as it is still quite a small industry we also have limitations as far as the society is concerned into how creative we can be.
Where are we heading with the present trends? Well, you know the world is a very different place and in the last ten years social media has made it possible for people to become famous for being nothing, you no longer need any skills or talent to be famous. I mean just look at the Kardashians, they don’t really do anything except dress up, so it will be interesting to see how the world progresses, I don’t know how you combat that but I think to have a sense of privacy and a sense of curiosity at the same time and to strike the balance between all that is very important. You should always be curious about what’s happening in the world around you and have many interests but you should also work towards having a private life and everything should not be on display but as far as the fashion industry in Pakistan is concerned, everybody seems to think that it is easy to be a fashion designer and it seems to be that everybody without training or with training or somebody who thinks they have a good taste, they will go ahead and open up a label but those kind of things cannot last unless you have incredible business sense or you are really very talented. So those people will stay and everyone else is just going to come and go.
Would it be true to say, too many brands and celebrities but not enough talent to be in the fashion industry? It is a very mean thing to say but what would be fair to say is that as much talent as there is, there is also that much mediocrity and sub-standardness. I think generally as a country, as people, we all need to improve our standards. There is this concept that, you know, “Sab Chalta hai, Yeh to sirf unees bees ka farq hai” – These things need to be fixed I feel in our culture not just in the fashion industry but everywhere. I think you should try to do the absolute 101% rather than be happy with the 99%.
Your word for Kluchit.com? Well as far as I am concerned, Kluchit deals with all my three most favorite things, fashion food and travel so keep doing what you guys are doing. Just keep Kluching it!
Contributed by: Team Kluchit.
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