What the real purpose of a fashion week? From a purely rationalist perspective, it’s to display and sell clothes. A more aesthetically inclined view would tell you that it’s to expand the creative paradigms of design and help define the visual zeitgeist of an era. A cynical economist could arguably reduce it to an advertising campaign to sell ludicrously overpriced goods to the worlds wealthiest. And lastly, from a cultural perspective, the fashion week plays much the same role as the contemporary art biennial; namely, serving as a sure-fire strategy of a country seeking to partially overturn its negative portrayal in the global media.

Yet, it is perhaps too simplistic an opinion. The news of Pakistan’s booming fashion industry isn’t in fact as surprising as it perhaps sounds. Whilst it’s unusual for the British media to report about a predominantly Muslim country encouraging a putatively vain, image-driven market, the fashion industry has in fact long been capitalising on Eastern locations.

Brands such as Louis Vuitton and Burberry have accomplished soaring profits in Asian markets, directly influencing the former’s appointment of the Taiwanese Godfrey Gao to launch their new campaign; the first male Asian model to do so. These trends are in line with the media’s surge in quasi-apocalyptic apprehension how the rising financial promise of the BRIC countries will soon be displaying Western hegemony in global economics.

Our new world order, then, is taking its toll on the long-standing dominance of New York, Milan, London and Paris as the spearheads of creative design. Not to miss out on a new mass-market for obscene extravagance, the fashion world has accordingly been shifting its gaze eastwards. This is particularly positive news in the context that Western fashion designers has so long patronised foreign aesthetics. This month’s Vogue highlights ‘Orientalism’ as a distinct trend of the latest Spring/Summer shows for instance, but it seems in response to the historic cultural legacy of Asia designed were little more than the cursory kimono, with a few decorative bamboo shoots drawn in for good measure.

The times however, are a-changing. The increased exposure of countries like Pakistan in the global fashion industry will doubtless demand a greater cultural sensitivity to the interpretation of style, albeit whilst proving that really, fashion week is never about the clothes. In an ever more globalised world, its the economic and cultural commodity which the clothes represent which is really being paraded down the catwalk.

Originally published 1st February 2011