Re: Interesting Faiza Samee article
Hindol Sengupta describes Faiza Samee in The Hindu
"Like Ritu Kumar back home, (Faiza) Samee has single-handedly saved scores of heritage textile crafts from dying out in Pakistan. The elegant, salwar-kameezed, peaches and cream complexioned woman lives in the old-moneyed Karsaz neighbourhood of Karachi where every Indian going to Pakistan for the first time has to go to show their face at the Foreigner Registration Office.
But I wasn't going only to see her revivalist genius. I wanted to see her legendary store, in one part of her workshop-cum-home, which opens for only two hours everyday.
People fly in from Lahore to arrive between 4.30 and 6.30 p.m. when Faiza Samee opens her doors. Such is the luxury of the rich in Karachi.
Samee, who buys Birkins (from Hermes and one of the most expensive handbags in the world) on whim, lives in a leafy white-washed home that is slightly My Name is Red meets Gone with the Wind, once dazzlingly white-washed, it now has intricate filigree patterns as Samee reinvents age-old architecture traditions on her walls in the same way that she resurrects vintage stitch and weave techniques.
Over kebabs and a stinging mixed dal (from Sri Lanka and Pakistan, she told me), Samee said she is often bored of commerce. She doesn't wake up before four p.m., she likes to go away to London in summer, she doesn't care much about brand building, she is not interested in doing pret lines and she is now more interested in rebuilding her home (it has already taken three years and likely to take another three) rather than clothes."
- Hindol Sengupta, from 'The rich in Karachi and other luxuries' printed in The Hindu, September 28, 2008