Dior Oh Dior, Pakistan's Young Rich Get Their Very Own Trendy Style Bible 

Eric Ellis, Karachi 

06/17/1996 

Words like funky, groovy, ecstasy and sex sound like swearing when said within the confines of Karachi's toffy Sind Club.

But here in this creaking Anglophile temple of privilege, where Pakistan's "begums" lunch and gossip while their industrialist husbands keep them in the Christian Dior to which they've become accustomed, Fifi Haroon is out to shock ... sort of.

Fifi has made a career out of alarming the conservative Pakistani society from which she springs by drinking, going out with an actor, singing in a band, living alone and, now at 33, publishing XTRA magazine.

Looking a lot like Britain's style bible The Face, it has in just a few issues become the handbook of Pakistan's trendies, consumers weaned on the external attractions beamed into the sub-continent by MTV and Rupert Murdoch's STAR Television.

Living in a society where the "mad mullahs" (the term is Fifi's) of Islam can, and happily would, close her down, Pakistan's groovy generation would not be out of place in the bars and cafes of Carlton or Paddington, conspicuous only in spending more money.

They are now a potent buying force in a country often overlooked by business fixated on the shadow of its bigger neighbours India and China.

"What is forgotten about Pakistan is that we have not been closed from the world like India or China has been until recently," says Fifi. "We know what's going on out there."

Pakistan's middle class can be measured at as many as 15 million, an eighth of the population - or, put another way, a market not far short of Australia.

XTRA readers - the magazine is in English - tend to be foreign-educated, well travelled, own an imported car, a mobile phone and have an e-mail address, live cheaply at home with their families and work in finance, business or media-related fields.

The last time they wore traditional clothing was probably to a wedding, although Fifi dons the shalwar kameez for this outing at the Sind Club "just to keep the aunties guessing".

Western designer labels are de rigueur and the Holy Koran on the family bookshelf is likely to be in English and gathering dust.

The cultural reference points are mostly Western, the language more English than Urdu.

The talk at a recent gathering of Karachi's "style mafia" of hairdressers, designers, journalists and models in the upmarket suburb Hill Park was of Sharon Stone, Trainspotting, Bryn Mawr and Vitara 4WDs. The cigarettes were Camel, the preferred tipple Johnnie Walker.

XTRA's "look" is intelligent and very contemporary. The cover models have bare midriffs and clasp each other suggestively, unheard of in Pakistani publishing. Fifi says the criticism so far has been that the magazine is "soft porn", and the mullahs have kept their distance, largely because XTRA is in English, considered an island of privileged infidels by Pakistan's clerics.

"The one area that is largely off-limits for us is religion," Fifi said. "We can discuss sex, drugs and all manner of social issues but I'd probably steer clear of religion."

But even if the mullahs did come calling, it's likely that Fifi could keep them at bay, except at election time, which is due by 1998.

Fifi gets away with shocking Pakistan because of her surname, as recognisable in Pakistan as the Bhutto political dynasty. The Karachi-based Haroons own the country's biggest media empire, led by the flagship English newspaper Dawn.

Dawn isn't just a daily newspaper, it's part of the Pakistani nation, founded by the Quaid-e-Azam (Great Leader) Mohamed Ali Jinnah, the first leader of independent Pakistan after the 1947 Partition.

"I want to shake people up by showing them things they are not used to," says Fifi, a product of Bryn Mawr and Cambridge. "I'm fully aware of what I'm doing. I'm walking on the edge but I don't want to fall over it.

"Some advertisers have hesitated and thought we were too hot to get involved, but now we have people starting to tailor their ads for our look. Its very encouraging."