he phrase, the impatience of youth, sometimes seems like a fallacy. It sounds cool to say the young are naturally without patience, but there are times you will come across someone with decades of life and experience behind them, still revving their engine, ready to race down the road to the next stop.

Maheen Khan is neither a new or obscure name, nor is she anybody’s fool. In fact, as she talks about the new collection she is taking to Dubai to show at an exhibition, she makes clear that if something isn’t happening organically for her, she will make it happen. And while she will always try to make things happen for anyone who needs a leg up, if the street remains one-way, with no effort from the other party, she will shut it down.

“I’m going to Dubai for my own personal fashion week,” she laughs. “I missed fashion week and since it isn’t happening here, I’m taking myself elsewhere.”

One might have – erroneously – thought that Khan was referring to the excitement and nerves, the show and grandeur of fashion week, but perhaps she was simply referring to the act of creating for one.

The collection she has put together is for herself, as she puts it, not for herself to wear, but as a means to artistic ends.

Simply cut and embellished even more simply, when at all, the capsule collection is glam and silk, red and navy, easy fusion, classic Maheen.

Fashion week to Maheen Khan, aside from setting a stage

dedicated to style, was also about creating opportunities. Fashion Pakistan, which last showed late last year, was, “set up in my living room,” according to Khan, and “shut down in my   living room too.”

But while she does have both the skill and the drive to make things happen for herself, what Maheen Khan misses most about fashion week is introducing and promoting new fashion stars.

“Why would anyone want to see the same old people doing the same old thing?” she asks. Fashion week to her, aside from setting a stage dedicated to style, was also about creating opportunities.

Fashion Pakistan, which last showed late last year, was, “set up in my living room,” according to Khan, and “shut down in my living room too.”

While this sudden move seems drastic, and delivered without warning, Khan had powered through behaviors that were unacceptable to her for some time before bringing the axe down. What remains, within fashion, she says, “are a lot of designers who are only designing for the client.” The strategy of designing for the client is obviously a good business one, but if we were to look at the situation through Khan’s eyes, the business aspect can be the fly in the ointment of creativity.

Ready to do what she needs to do to keep her creativity fueled, Khan promises Instep an in-depth catch up soon, with hot takes on everything from style, fashion journalism, and other miscellaneous skeletons in closets!