Labour Day

Labour Day (Labor Day in the United States) is an annual holiday to celebrate the achievements of workers. Labour Day has its origins in the labour union movement, specifically the eight-hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest. For many countries, Labour Day is synonymous with, or linked with, International Workers' Day, which occurs on 1 May. For other countries, Labour Day is celebrated on a different date, often one with special significance for the labour movement in that country. In Canada and the United States, it is celebrated on the first Monday of September and considered the official end of the summer holiday for most of the respective countries, as public school and university students return to school that week or the following week.

International Workers' Day, also known as Labour Day in some places, is a celebration of laborers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labor movement, anarchists, socialists, and communists and occurs every year on May Day, 1 May, which also coincides with the Celtic spring festival.^[1][2] The date was chosen for International Workers' Day by the Second International to commemorate the Haymarket affair, which occurred in Chicago on 4 May 1886.^[2] This Day has its origins in the labour union movement, specifically the eight-hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest.^[3]

Being a traditional European spring celebration, May Day is a national public holiday in many countries, but in only some of those countries is it celebrated specifically as "Labour Day" or "International Workers' Day". Some countries celebrate a Labour Day on other dates significant to them, such as the United States which celebrates Labor Day on the first Monday of September.

History

Beginning in the late 19th Century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, a variety of days were chosen by trade unionists as a day to celebrate labor. In the United States and Canada, a September holiday, called Labor or Labour Day, was first proposed in the 1880s. In 1882, Matthew Maguire, a machinist, first proposed a Labor Day holiday while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union (CLU)) of New York. Others argue that it was first proposed by Peter J. McGuire of the American Federation of Labor in May 1882, after witnessing the annual labour festival held in Toronto, Canada.^[6] In 1887,Oregon was the first state of the United States to make it an official public holiday. By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty U.S. states officially celebrated Labor Day. Thus by 1887 in North America, Labor Day was an established, official holiday but in September not on 1 May.

1 May was chosen to be International Workers' Day in order to commemorate the 4 May, 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. The police were trying to disperse a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday, when an unidentified person threw a bomb at the police. The police responded by firing on the workers, killing four demonstrators.

In 1889, a meeting in Paris was held by the first congress of the Second International, following a proposal by Raymond Laving which called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891. Subsequently, the May Day Riots of 1894 occurred. In 1904, the International Socialist Conference meeting in Amsterdam called on "all Social Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace." The congress made it "mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on 1 May, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers. Across the globe, labor activists sought to make May Day an official holiday to honor labor and many countries have done so.

May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist and anarchist groups. May Day has been an important official holiday in countries such as the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba and the former Soviet Union. May Day celebrations typically feature elaborate popular and military parades in these countries.

In 1955, the Catholic Church dedicated 1 May to "Saint Joseph  The Worker. Saint Joseph is for the Church the patron saint of workers and craftsmen (among others).

During the Cold War, May Day became the occasional for large military parades in Red Square by the Soviet Union and attended by the top leaders of the Kremlin, especially the Politburo, atop Lenin's Tomb. It became an enduring symbol of that period.

Strawberry hound

When winter starts to wane and before summer really arrives, fruit stalls on the streets and fruit aisles in the supermarkets are adorned with strawberries. Like bright red jewels, they look as irresistible in 1.2kg cardboard boxes as they do in heaps and piles on carts or in wicker baskets slung across the vendors’ shoulders

Known as nutrition powerhouses, strawberries can bolster your body’s health in innumerable ways from combating inflammation and controlling diabetes, to protecting cognitive function and improving heart health. According to an in vitro cell study, strawberry leaf extract used on leukemia cells showed significant cancer-killing activity, while freeze-dried strawberries slowed the growth of two varieties of cervical cancer cells grown in culture.

For those of us less initiated with medical mumbo, strawberries are packed with vitamin C, manganese and fibre and qualify as a super food due to their antioxidant quality.

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Want to buy perfect strawberries every time? Follow your nose...

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Now that it is decided that while the season lasts, strawberries will be totally allowed to invade all our meals and menus (like mangos do in the mango season) with strawberry pancakes or strawberry jam on toast for breakfast, strawberry juice after a workout, strawberry salad for lunch and strawberry mousse or ice cream for dessert — we must know how to be able to buy the best strawberries because all strawberries look perfect.

Quite simply you could taste them for sweetness but how many places will allow you to taste them? Look for a deep red colour which is another indicator of flavour, but strawberries actually continue to redden after being picked, even though they do not continue to get sweeter, so you could get a little disappointed if your brightly coloured strawberries turn out to be not so sweet.

Apparently, smell is the most reliable criterion for practically any fruit and even more so for strawberries. So pick up the berries and give them a good sniff. Sweet, ripe strawberries will have a great strawberry scent to them, just like ripe peaches, plums, pears and other fruits do when they’re at their peak.

For a strawberry, you want a fragrant smell together with enough sweetness. For that combo, the berry has to be ripe enough. If it was picked while under-ripe, it won’t smell good enough and may also be hard and sour. A strawberry picked while under-ripe will be white or even slightly greenish at the top.

If it was picked long ago and is not fresh any more, it will have lost the more volatile components of its fragrance. So only a ripe, fresh strawberry will smell great.

If you smell the slightest hint of mould,

fermentation or foulness, reject them because they may not keep even one night.

Don’t ever go by shape. There are ugly, lumpy strawberries of a lighter, slightly orange colour which could be sweet or the picture perfect ones can be hard and dry, without much aroma.

Older or over ripened strawberries look duller and have less sheen. Sometimes smaller strawberries have more flavour.

A bit of white at the top doesn’t mean anything, as long as there is not too much, and as long as there is no white in the bottom half, the strawberry is probably okay.

So the next time you go strawberry shopping, pretend you’re a dog and enjoy sniffing.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, April 19th, 2015

Food stories: Banoffee pie

 I sat at my dearest friend’s house in Dubai insisting that I was too stuffed to even consider a sip of water let alone dessert. Despite my protests, out came Banoffee and my resolve went down the proverbial drain.

What is one to write about Banoffee? Just one more thing that the British got right, like Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Banoffee is beyond delicious, a perfect combination of the unhealthiest ingredients (except for the bananas) playing havoc with the waistline, and extreme euphoria for the mind and the taste buds.

A biscuit and butter pie crust playing turf to homemade caramel, bananas and whipped cream, topped with a biscuit crumble, a sprinkle of coffee and chocolate shavings, sparingly, if desired.

While conducting my research on Banoffee, I came across many articles, books, essays and chef’s stories regarding the pie. All gave their personal opinion and two cents on the origin of the pie, none disputing its sweet scrumptiousness.

 Needless to say I was intrigued, if the pie was created in the 70s then there had to be literature on it by the creator Ian Dowding. Seek and you shall find, and I did, an essay titled The Completely True and Utter Story of Banoffee Pie by Ian Dowding, and with it his original recipe. Following are the excerpts;

Nobody ever invents dishes – they evolve. This then is how it happened. It may be a bit mundane but I’d like to put the record straight.

In the late 1960’s there were the seeds of a food revolution sprouting. Foreign travel was getting through to the British public that there was more to food than boiled beef and plum duff. I had completed a two-year catering course at Swindon College reasonably competently and had got a job at a small restaurant in Berkshire as an assistant sous chef.

Russell [the sous chef] used to do all the important things like main courses, pates and patisserie – I did all the rest. Russell had his secret recipes one of which was a dessert he had brought back from America called Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie. However it was no secret that it rarely worked. The tantrums Russell threw when it didn’t work schooled me well in the art of profanity if nothing else.

A year later I moved on to a head chef’s job at a small restaurant in Sussex called The Hungry Monk. I took all Russell’s secret recipes with me but quietly forgot about BCT pie. This was the early 70s and the food revolution was in full swing. In a conversation with my sister she told me about unopened boiling cans of condensed milk in water for several hours, which produced a soft toffee. A light bulb lit up in my head – I would resurrect BCT pie.

The owner of The Hungry Monk, Nigel Mackenzie, was never one to let me bask in the light of inventive glory for long. The words ‘surely we can make this even better’ still ring in my ears today. He decided that it required something else, a new dimension, a bit of a tweak here and there. We tried some different variations, apple was quite good, mandarin oranges were downright disgusting. Nigel suggested bananas and straight away we knew we had got it right. The only trouble now was that we had to find another name as banana, coffee, toffee pie was getting a bit long winded. It was Nigel who came up with the word ‘Banoffi’ as a combination and abbreviation of the syllables in the ingredients. It was only really meant as a temporary name but it seemed to stick.

 Without that name we would not have been able to trace the rise in popularity of this concoction. It started as feedback from customers who rang to book and to check that it was still on the menu until it got to the point when we couldn’t take it off. Within a couple of years I began to see it on a lot of menus of other restaurants. People we knew coming back from abroad reported seeing it on menus in Australia and America, and there were even stories of it being served at No. 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. The word ‘Banoffi’ now has the distinction of being listed in the Oxford English Dictionary.

That was a long time ago and now every supermarket has a version, there are Banoffi ice creams, biscuits, chocolates and other sundry items – and no, we have never made a penny from it, if only one of us had been canny enough to trade mark the name. I don’t mind that I won’t be remembered, but I do like the fact that many years hence someone somewhere will be making a Banoffi pie. Anyway I didn’t invent it – it evolved.

Many years have passed since those early days and I have lost touch with the people from the very early part of this story. Was it really called Blum’s? Did Russell really bring that idea back from America? Then a couple of years ago a friend brought me a copy of the American version of Homes and Gardens. In the back of the magazine was a cookery section featuring puddings from famous American restaurants, and there was Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie, named after a restaurant in Hollywood.

Rarely does it happen that we have a popular recipe (a recipe that we routinely make in our homes, and one that is routinely served at restaurants) and the creator, or culinary genius who helped evolve it to its current form, is our contemporary and himself tells us the Food Story behind it.

It would be like Mumtaz Mahal telling us her genius and her discussions with the royal kitchen staff that led to the evolution of the food we delightfully call the Biryani.

 When it was time for me to make the Banoffee , I sought out my dearest friend Amna, she makes the best Banoffee, only second to Ian Dowding of course. My taste testers eagerly waited for me to wrap up the photo shoot armed with forks so they could dig in.

Needless to say it was a pure delight. SP delicious and wonderfully cool this hot summer, here it is from my kitchen to yours.

Ingredients

6 to 6 ½ oz. crushed Graham crackers

3 oz. Butter

3 golden and perfectly ripe bananas

14 oz. can of condensed milk (sealed in its original can and boiled in a full pot of water for 4 to 5 hours until the condensed milk turns to caramel. Please ensure that the can is submerged in boiling water for the entire length of time it is set on the stove to boil, adding more water as the water evaporates. Please ensure that the water does not dry out in the boiling pot, since that will lead for the can to explode causing serious bodily harm and kitchen ceiling damage. I usually boil several cans and freeze, so they are ready to use as a quick and easy dessert when needed). 1 pint heavy whipping cream (or double crème).

Optional, for decoration

Crushed graham crackers

Chocolate shavings

A dash of coffee powder

Castor sugar to taste to be added to whipping cream while whipping, I prefer not to add it since there is enough sweetness in the caramel, bananas and crust. The unsweetened whipped cream deliciously balances out the sweetness of the pie.

Method

Mix graham crackers and melted butter in a food processor, form pie crust by pressing down the pastry at the base of a pie dish and put in fridge to chill for ½ hour to 1 hour. Once the crust is chilled slice three bananas and set on the crust, pour caramel (add a dash of milk to make the caramel consistency spreadable, maintaining the thickness), beat whipping cream until it forms soft peaks. Pour on caramel and decorate if desired.

Store in fridge to set and serve.

Experiments on hybrid food crops

To enhance food crops’ productivity and ensure food security, various agricultural researchers have been experimenting with hybrid seeds of maize, rice, wheat and sunflower for quite some time.

The results of these experiments have remained mixed, ranging from renewed hopes for productivity to a better understanding of what is required to make hybrid seed search wider and more result-oriented. The maize hybrid seed have been introduced for sowing.

Though corn output has been rising in recent years, the rationale for developing corn hybrid seed is obvious. “Further increase in production would create larger exportable surplus besides encouraging the use of staple grains in domestic consumption via lower prices,” says an official of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.

The hybrid corn seed developed by the Punjab Seed Corporation and the Breeders of Maize and Millet Research Institute is expected to give 100 maunds per acre yield, against the current average of 62 maunds. And, the seed can be sown in both autumn and winter.

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Some growers in Punjab have got higher per-hectare wheat yields this year by using two Chinese hybrid varieties, Beijing-6 and Beijing-7

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Some years ago, two new varieties of hybrid rice GNY50 and GNY53 were introduced in Sindh and Balochistan, and after initial success of pilot projects, their commercial cultivation had started. Rice growers say these hybrid varieties have played a great role in boosting paddy production in Sindh over last three years. In Balochistan, too, these varieties have helped boost paddy output after the 2010 super floods though poor law and order situation and resultant neglect of agriculture prevented full — scale exploitation of the production potential of these varieties.

Some growers in Punjab have got higher per-hectare wheat yields this year by using two Chinese hybrid wheat varieties Beijing-6 and Beijing-7. They say that the use of these varieties might expand in coming years, given their compatibility with our soil and environmental conditions. The two varieties were first brought in Pakistan and tested at pilot projects three years ago. Guard Agri, a local agricultural research company, in collaboration with a Chinese company Sinoseeds, has already carried out experiments, in 81 test fields, of other Chinese hybrid wheat varieties. Both companies are now developing a strategy for marketing these varieties, industry sources say.

In 2006, hybrid sunflower varieties Parsun-1 and Hysun-33 were tested along with 11 other hybrids in three districts of Balochistan and were found promising for large scale cultivation. Since then, these two varieties have been under cultivation there and have led to higher sunflower output, according to officials of provincial agriculture department.

Experiments in development of hybrid food and fodder crop seeds are gathering pace. Federal agencies, tasked with agricultural research and research wings of agricultural universities, too, are now working more extensively in this area. And, in some cases, the results have been very encouraging.

The National Agricultural Research Centre, for example, has developed two hybrid fodder crop seeds Narc-Hybrid 2 and Narc-Hybrid 4 under a dedicated research programme to get higher per-hectare fodder yields.

In 2014, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council had developed Canola Hybrid and sunflower (Parsun-3) hybrids with good yield potential besides producing a few other hybrid seeds with Parc Agro-Tech Company on pilot scale. Patco-Parc is said to have already marketed around 50 tonnes of canola hybrid seed during last three years. The seed is stated to have been distributed in many districts of Punjab and KP through private seed company and Patco, to more than 5,000 farmers.

Parc officials say, developing high-yield hybrid seeds of canola and sunflower is the need of the hour to boost domestic production of edible oil-producing crops and, thereby, cut foreign exchange spending on imports of edible oil.

Perhaps the most unnoticed hybrid seed development stories can be found in fruits and vegetable sub-sector of crops. “Over the years, we’ve developed a lot of hybrid vegetable seeds and have been marketing them successfully,” says an official of Agrico Pak, a local vegetables’ seed company. His company’s hybrid seeds for seedless okra, early-harvest Slicer cucumber and broad-leaves Charleston watermelons are competing with hybrid seeds of multinational companies.

An accelerated drive for development of hybrid seeds for food crops and fruits and vegetables has started yielding results.

The success of hybrid technology in any crop, depends on yield advantage over open pollinated varieties and production as well as marketing feasibility. “We’re meeting the first prerequisite but there are problems in the second one,” says a senior official of Parc.

“The federal and provincial governments may consider allocating additional money in their agricultural budgets to incentivise production and marketing of hybrid seeds being developed in the country.”

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, April 13th, 2015

As YouTube marks 10th year, Facebook emerges as video threat

MENLO PARK: It’s 10 years to the day since the first clip (“Me at the Zoo”) was uploaded on YouTube, and the service — now owned by Google Inc — has dominated online video-sharing ever since.

But for how long?

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday that its users were watching 4 billion videos a day, compared with 3bn in January and just 1bn in September.

That was enough for at least nine brokerages to raise their price targets on Facebook’s stock on Thursday despite the company’s slowest quarterly revenue growth in two years.

Almost all analysts saw video advertising as one of Facebook’s most promising areas for revenue growth.

“The Internet is experiencing something of an inflection point in terms of demand for video and mobile advertising, and FB may well be the single biggest beneficiary of this inflection,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney said.

Mahaney raised his price target on Facebook’s stock by $17, to $105 from $88.

Facebook shares were down about 1 per cent at $83.92 in early trading on Thursday.

Google does not disclose viewership or revenue numbers for YouTube, although the company said in January 2012 that it had reached 4bn daily views.

That was almost seven years after YouTube’s co-founder, Jawed Karim, posted the video of his visit to the zoo on the fledgling site.

Brokerage Cowen & Co estimates that YouTube’s daily views will reach 7.9bn by the end of the year, generating $5.9bn in revenue. The brokerage expects Facebook’s revenue from video advertising to reach about $1bn this year.

Facebook launched auto-play video ads in March 2014.

“FB’s video consumption growth remains explosive as it evolves into a premier digital/mobile video platform,” Cowen analysts wrote in a client note, raising their target price on Facebook’s stock to $94 from $91.

Mobile ads accounted for 73pc of Facebook’s total ad revenue in the first quarter, up from 59pc a year earlier.

“Looking ahead, we believe video will play a significant role in bringing more marketers to mobile,” Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said on a call with analysts on Wednesday. “More than 75pc of global video views on Facebook occur on mobile, and we believe mobile video will become more important to marketers over time,” she said.

Facebook’s net income attributable to stockholders fell 20pc to $509 million in the three months ended March 31, while revenue rose 42pc to $3.54bn.

Adjusted earnings were better than the market expected but revenue missed. Revenue from advertising rose 46pc to $3.32bn.

“... While ad revenue growth has been robust, the company appears to only be in the early innings of fully monetising video advertisements,” Barclays Capital analysts said.

Analysts also saw plenty of opportunity to build a revenue stream from messaging service WhatsApp, photo-sharing service Instagram and virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift. Facebook is investing heavily in all these products.

“Core Facebook continues to power results, and the well known catalysts remain on the horizon and a source of potential upside with Instagram ramping in 2016, WhatsApp in 2017, and Oculus in 2018,” Piper Jaffray analysts wrote.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2015

PEL’s expanding market

PAK Elektron Limited holds Rs32bn in assets, which are deployed in two principal lines of business that some believe are poles apart.

The first is the appliances division, which produces refrigerators, air conditioners, microwave ovens, water dispensers and deep freezers. And the second is the power division, which is in the business of producing and selling distribution and power transformers, energy meters and switchgears.

Many sector watchers feel that the company — the largest producer in the power segment — would stand tall among competitors due to two recent developments: the planned privatisation of the Heavy Electrical Complex (HEC), and the sale of Siemens Pakistan’s transformer business to a foreign buyer.

The HEC requires massive overhauling, while the Siemens transformer buyer is yet to announce the company’s strategy. These developments will provide Pak Elektron (PEL) enough time to consolidate its market position.

PEL reported a profit-after-tax of Rs2.241bn for calendar year 2014, a quantum jump from earnings of Rs607m the previous year. This came on the back of a 28pc jump in sales to Rs24.1bn, from Rs18.9bn.

Its directors told shareholders in their annual report that the company is “back on track, from recovery to progress”.

While it retained all of the profit and skipped paying a dividend to consolidate reserves, PEL’s stock has managed to command investors’ interest and generally attracts a fairly high trade volume. Last Thursday, it closed at Rs64.75 a share. Same time a year ago, the stock was trading at Rs26.60 — providing a return of 143pc in a year.

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PEL is believed to be a major beneficiary of the government’s agenda of alleviating the energy crisis, and its power division is all set to meet the upcoming infrastructure development requirements following improved power supplies in the country

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The company’s paid-up capital stood at Rs57.8bn by end-2014, with its directors, CEO and family members holding 57.8pc of the equity. Around 24pc of the company’s shares was vested with the general public, a refreshing departure from the practice of most managements and sponsors leaving a pittance of free-float for the public.

The directors attributed the improved financial performance in the year to improved margins in domestic appliances “as a result of the company’s efforts to improve product features in operational as well as aesthetic terms, bringing cost efficiencies and improving productivity”. Appliance sales grew 41pc during the year, contributing 50pc to the company’s bottom line and 57pc to overall sales.

Refrigerators are the company’s mainstay, with sales rising 32pc in 2014; PEL has a 28pc market share in this category.

“An essential item of use for every household and with the rise in prosperity, especially in rural areas, the demand for refrigerators is surging,” the directors informed. In deep freezers, the company caters to corporate customers like Unilever (Wall’s), Engro Foods (Omoré) and Pakistan Dairy Products (Igloo).

The company also restarted the production of microwave ovens and split air conditioners, with the directors promising addition of more products to its range in the future.

In the power division, the company managed to grow its sales by 16pc despite having faced a slowdown in orders from distribution companies. PEL is a major electrical-equipment supplier to Wapda and K-Electric. This was compensated by an increase in sales of transformers to the private sector.

The directors also informed stakeholders that the company is making deeper inroads into foreign markets. “After successful introduction into the Saudi Electricity Company, PEL is gaining ground in export markets in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, with a special focus on Afghanistan”.

In switchgear, significant improvement was witnessed due to an increase in housing activities, in addition to a surge in new orders from industry.

In a recent report, Arif Habib Limited analysts mentioned a number of factors favouring the company. These included the power division’s growing market share, healthy gross margins driven by the home appliances segment amid its rebranding, favourable duty structure, deleveraging of the balance sheet, and the company turning into a Shariah-compliant entity. It stands as a Shariah-compliant company, as it fulfils the six pre-defined mandatory Shariah requirements, according to its balance sheet.

PEL is believed to be a major beneficiary of the government’s agenda of alleviating the energy crisis, and its power division is all set to meet the upcoming infrastructure development requirements following improved power supplies in the country.

With regards to future prospects, the company’s directors asserted that “both margins and market sizes of appliances products are expected to grow further. The appliances division has not only regained its market share but is also determined to consolidate its position in the complete range of domestic appliances, in addition to further strengthening its market share in each product category”.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, April 20th , 2015

PSFW Day 2: Muse, Saira Shakira and Nida Azwer hit the right note

 The second day of the PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week saw a little more oomph on the red carpet as compared to day 1, with big names like Meesha Shafi, Ali Zafar, Ayesha Omar, HSY, Zara Shahjahan, model Nael with his wife, Sundus Manan and the like attending.

Of course, the glitterati from the media and society were was also seen dressed in designer wear from head to toe, ready to make the best of the event.

The first half of the day began with high street brands as per Pakistan Fashion Design Council’s commitment to high-street fashion.

High street brands play it safe

The first presentation was by the coveted brand Generation. Generation showcased their collection ‘I See You’ using a different number of fabrics such as silks, organzas and mesh. Embellishment used was mukesh, threadwork, mirror, cutwork and applique upon prints.

While there was nothing ground breaking in their collection, from a market standpoint, this Generation collection will sell. One particular ensemble we liked was a yellow crop top with a zipper in the front featuring mirror work paired with a skirt in earthy tones.

Next up, Shirin Hasan presented her collection and true to her design aesthetic, Shirin incorporated bright hues and fused western cuts like skirts, cropped tops, structured pants and more with her unique block printing techniques. The range of ensembles had some wearable pieces and we especially loved the waistcoat worn by Mehreen Syed.

Rayya Gilani showcased a number of different types of skirts with cropped tops on tones of mustards and yellows. Her Vintage Luxury collection used organza, silks and lace on gold, purple, black, grey with pink. She played with stripes, which are hard to handle and some pieces didn't carry this classic look too well.

 A favourite from her collection was a red cropped tube top on printed pants with an organza cape.

The last presentation in the high-street segment was Beechtree, showcasing their collection ‘Porcelain Dreams,’ drawing inspiration from Orient, Chinoiserie and classic Eastern motifs. The collection saw tones of blues, white and gold with straight boxy layers.

 The entire range, though average at best, will definitely sell in the Pakistani market.

Designer pret: Muse, Saira Shakira and Nida Azwer hit the right note

The designer showcases kicked off with the luxury brand MUSE. MUSE was one of the better presentations of the night.

 Featuring embellishment neatly sprayed on luxe fabrics to form jackets and tops featuring both long and short hemlines and fringed crop tops, the collection was polished: well-finished and well-constructed. For this collection, MUSE used classic black, white, gold and silver combinations. MUSE played with sheer fabric to created striped skirts, re-working the peek-a-boo trend in a wearable way. One particular favourite from the collection was a jacket featuring an extended shoulder.

These fringe-edged skirts were also a welcome addition to the showcase.

All in all, the collection was coherent, wearable and genuinely luxury pret. However, a gold MUSE belt that we have seen pretty much everywhere now needs to retire already along with a round-neck sleeveless long shirt, replicas of which we have seen countless times.

 Saira Shakira showcased a wholly pret collection featuring hot pinks, whites, floral prints, blues and touches of black working with laser cut techniques combined with the right amount of embellishment. It was a preppy showcase featuring loads of fringe [especially a fringe bag that was spectacular] and layering.

Numerous jackets, gowns, skirts, pants and the likes were seen. Some outfits worked together incredibly well such as the opening piece and this number worn by Mehreen Syed,

However, a couple fell short of the expected standards such as an abstract black print on white featured on a backless gown with red highlights.

 Nida Azwer is regular fare at any fashion week in the country. Her collection featured impeccable prints on incredibly boring silhouettes featuring the same straight shirts, crop tops, jumpsuits, pants, jackets, printed shararas and the likes with no particular innovation. However, the prints did stand out and her choice of colour palette of cool blues and greens was smart, lending the collection a sense of unity and coherence. That said, each piece from the designers collection was perfectly tailored with excellent workmanship. The best piece out of her showcase was hands down a mint coloured jumpsuit.

 Overall, speaking in terms of the collection, from an experienced professional we hope to see evolution and consistent refinement in terms of design aesthetic.

Teena by Hina Butt showcased a collection that was best forgotten. Understandably, she was aiming for fun and quirky in celebration of summer but it managed to flat line on the ramp.

 The collection was made on white fabric utilising hot pinks, lime greens, hot oranges and the like. A pleated (was it?) dressy outfit was perhaps the worst piece on the ramp last night.

The finale of the night belonged to Zara Shahjahan who played with her eastern aesthetic more so than her western one which we are usually accustomed to. Some pieces of the collection stood out such as the dholak pants and the layered off-shoulders dress. The collection featured some very funky waistcoats as well that should have probably been showcased first to set the foundation of her collection.

That said, some of her pieces that were showcased namely the ones featuring skirts, were gorgeous but a bit been there and done that for the designer. Meanwhile, what Zara Shahjahan chose to wear herself was a spectacular ensemble put together in an effortless boho chic look.

Day Two of the fashion week was, perhaps, better than Day One. Maybe, it is the high expectation we have come to have of the PFDC fashion weeks that the showcasing collections on the ramp are mostly falling short of what we had hoped. Until then, we can all wait for tomorrow which would be specifically dedicated to 'textile'.

Of course, one does wonder: do textiles even belong in fashion weeks?

Nonetheless, tomorrow will be dedicated to acts by Gul Ahmed, Al-Karam, Warda Prints, Shubinak, Harmony by Hang Ten and House of Ittehad.