Laam Fashion Week Returns to Lahore With 43 Shows and More Than 50 Labels, Nilofer Shahid to Headline the Invite-Only Show

Laam Fashion Week is coming back to Lahore, and the second edition is plainly aiming bigger than the first. Organisers said in a press release on Tuesday that the four-day event, running from October 23 to 26, will stage 43 shows with more than 50 established labels taking part, alongside independent designers, contemporary and high-street names, manufacturing and retail-ready brands, and a new generation of emerging talent.

The opening night has its own draw. The first show of the series, LFW Presents: Starry Night, brings together 21 designers, each presenting a single look inspired by the night sky. A separate showcase arranged with the Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design puts 10 young designers on the runway with capsule collections — for most of them, the largest audience of their careers so far.

The solo showcases carry the familiar heavyweight names of Pakistani fashion: Ali Xeeshan, Deepak Perwani, Emraan Rajput, Erum Khan, Fahad Hussayn, HSY, Hussain Rehar’s Jugnu Studios, Saira Rizwan and Sania Maskatiya are all on the line-up. The headline act, though, is a veteran. Nilofer Shahid will star in this edition’s LFW By Invite Only show, where her label Meeras presents a collection titled Tapestries in the Looms of Time. Rizwan Beyg led the same segment in the first edition.

High-street labels get their own platform under LFW Edit, several of them making a fashion week debut, while 12 retail-ready and manufacturing labels from the second round of the Ramp Readiness Programme will show in a dedicated LFW Retail Runway showcase.

The event is directed by Hassan Sheheryar Yasin and keeps last year’s runway-to-e-tail model: every show is livestreamed on the Laam app, where viewers anywhere in the world can buy what they see on the runway, and the shows also stream on ARY Plus. Laam’s chief executive Arif Iqbal said the platform’s mission was to showcase the best of Pakistani fashion to the world, while co-founder Amir Iqbal said the runway was only half the journey — what matters just as much is what happens after, when brands meet customers and collections turn into actual business.