By Omar Kureishi

Respectability exacts a terrible price. It leads to conformity. Yet, as a young man, I had shunned both. I was not a Bohemian and went regularly to the barber and shaved every morning. I was not even a rebel, but I had had a restless streak, a kind of institutional discontent, a compulsive need to rearrange the furniture. I had no idea what I wanted to be. Public relations was neither an art nor a science. It could not be defined precisely, it was like soup made from leftovers. It was the Abominable Snowman, there was the suspicion that it existed. The Hungarian-British writer, George Mikes, better known for his book, How to be an Alien, trying to define what humor was not, in another book, recalls an old story which is about explaining something very difficult to understand.

A blind man asks a young girl to describe milk. The young girl is astonished that someone can be so foolish that he doesn’t know what milk is. “Milk is white,” she tells him. The old man tells her that he is blind and doesn’t know what white means. The young girl tells him that this is very easy to explain and tells him that a swan is white. The old man tells her that a swan may be white, but he has never seen a swan. “It has a curved neck,” she tells him. The blind man says that he has no idea what ‘curved’ is. She lifts her arm, bends her wrists forward like a swan’s neck. “Feel it,” she says, “that’s curved.” The old man feels the girl’s arm, touches the girl’s wrist and exclaims joyfully: “Thank God. Now at last I know what milk is.”

Public relations, I discovered, had to be defined by some same circuitous route with even less comprehension. For a long time that which did not fit into a known or formal classification was handed over to public relations, not, of course, menial or janitorial jobs. My staff was also flattered to learn that they were the only literate persons in the organization. It was being asked to draft letters on every subject for other departments. If a manager in Rome wanted to present a pair of Pakistani jootis to the wife of a travel agent, someone from my department had to go and shop for it. I put a stop to all this in good time. I had worked closely with Nur Khan, but was not quite in the ‘loop’.

Asghar Khan saw a bigger role for me. He started to consult me on policy matters, get an input from me. Policy impacts on the public, and he felt that I should be involved from the onset. This created the perception that I had ‘influence’ with him. But I was well aware of the boundaries. Many sought me out with their grievances, passed over for promotion or wanting a foreign posting. I turned them down, saying that I had not been issued an open, general license to interfere in the bureaucracy of other departments, and that I had not been appointed as an Ombudsman.

One morning, Asghar Khan sent for me and told me that he was thinking about changing the air hostess’ uniform. “Perhaps, we should get a French designer to do it,” he said. Those were fairly ‘liberal’ times, the pre-Ziaul Haq days, and public morality had not been put in a straitjacket in the name of religion or orthodoxy. I thought it would be a good idea. At the same time, he suggested that we could hold a competition and invite Pakistani designers to send their ideas.

Erwin-Vasey had replaced Hobson, Bates, and we got in touch with them to sound out some well-known names in fashion designing. They came up with the name of Pierre Cardin. He was nowhere as famous as he would become. Erwin-Vasey informed us that he was receptive. I went to Paris to meet him.

I hadn’t been to Paris for some time. The first time I had, it was soon after I had returned from the United States and was passing the days, as it were, in Hastings in Sussex trying to sort out what I wanted to do with my life. I had been bewitched by Paris. But I had not been worldly-traveled and had only London or New York or San Francisco to compare with it. Los Angeles, where I had spent so many years, did not come into reckoning. LA had much to commend it, but lacked a pedigree. The only town that came close to Paris in grandeur and cultural conceit was Rome, though the French were more arrogant.

A Frenchman had once asked that since I was not an Englishman, why did I speak English? I pointed out to him that he had asked me that rather foolish question in English! Then, on my first visit, I had taken the ferry from Folkeston to Calais and a train to Paris. Now, I had arrived by a jet airliner. Would Paris, too, reflect this progress? Would the trees on the Champs Elysees been chopped down? I was assured by Karol Klacko that one could stain the soul of Paris.

Karol Klacko was a friend of my brother, Sattoo. Though he was Czech, he was by temperament a Parisian in spirit and passion. When he got agitated, he let his arms do the talking. He was a wonderful man, and he was at the airport to receive me and offered to come with me to meet Pierre Cardin. I declined, though he might have been useful as an interpreter. Pierre Cardin spoke very little English and I did not speak French. The PIA manager said that there was a young Pakistani girl on the staff and I took her along with me. That she was fluent in French was a bit of an exaggeration.

I had been briefed that Pierre Cardin was considerably miffed because Air France had spurred his offer to design the uniform of its air hostesses. He saw the chance of being asked to do this by an international airline as a rebuff to Air France. The discussion I had with him was of a general nature. I had stressed the importance that the new design should not be too great a departure from the present uniform, in that we needed to retain the shalwar-kameez and the dupatta. He listened quietly. I then suggested to him that before he put pen to his sketchpad, he should visit Pakistan. To have asked a French designer was a bold step, but we wanted to get it absolutely right. “We need you to blend the modern with the traditional, and not to lose out on either account.” This needs some translation, but he got the drift.

Present at the meeting was his chief cutter, Andre Oliver and Madame Pascuier, a kind of special assistant. When I asked him about the sort of fee he would want, he was fairly dismissive. He said that his main interest was the challenge. I got the impression that he was prepared to design the uniform without any fee. Pierre Cardin was a shrewd businessman and he saw that the opportunity presented him a platform that would allow him to launch himself as an international designer. In principle, we had reached an agreement and he decided to visit Pakistan and would bring Andre Oliver with him.

In the meantime, we had gone ahead with our own competition and I was surprised at the number of entries we received. Everybody had his or her idea how the PIA Air Hostess should be dressed. We held the finals to coincide with Pierre Cardin’s visit, and among the judges, as I recall, were Alys Faiz and Begum Kulsom Saifullah.

Pierre Cardin was not keen on tourist sites, but the bazaars fascinated him. He was interested in fabrics and designs and the colors. In Peshawar, at Qissa Khani, he bought thousands of rupees worth of glass bangles. What would he do with them? He said to watch out for his next collection.

He held discussion with the department concerned and he asked questions about the average height and weight of our girls. There was some talk about the color of the uniform and we held to our position that it should be green, and it was. But for the winter uniform, we agreed to a smart biscuit brown.

It took several months and I made numerous trips to Paris. On one such trip, I had gone to London before going to Paris for what was a crucial meeting with Pierre Cardin. I stayed at the Liberal Club, Winston Churchill had been a member. I was greeted by the hall porter with this cheerful information: “You are the youngest gentleman to stay at the Club, Sir.” I saw this bit of trivia as a warning.

The Liberal Club was in Whitehall. It was stuffy, snobbish, anti-feminist and really a museum-piece and bore no resemblance to The Drones Club, frequented by Bertie Wooster in P.G. Wodehouse books about the British upper-class. I fell ill and telephoned our PIA manager, M. Naseer, who also happened to be a close friend of mine. He had worked for Swiss Air and claimed that I had persuaded him to join PIA. In any case, he was one of our brightest officers and a cheerful man in the bargain.

The PIA doctor, Dr Cowan, was not available but he brought along Dr Mazhar Ali Khan who turned out to be a family friend. Dr Mazhar took one look at me and said that I had an abscess and I needed to get to a hospital. He took me to the King’s College Hospital (my father had done his internship there) and the abscess was drained. But I had to remain in hospital for a few days.

I told the doctor that I had a most important meeting in Paris. He was aghast but I insisted and all bandaged up, I went to meet Pierre Cardin. He looked at me in horror. I was unwell and groggy and was close to fainting. But I got a glimpse of the uniform that he had designed. It was stunning. It was still a shalwar-kameez, but he had taken the bagginess out of the shalwar. The dupatta became a sort of hood. We had anticipated that there would be some criticism. There always is as a matter of general principle. But the Pierre Cardin Uniform was received with near unanimous acclaim. But more than that, it became a fashion trendsetter not only in Pakistan, but in many Western countries as well.

We knew we had a winner and PIA changed the direction of its advertising. We created a campaign around the uniform. PIA had already established itself as a safe and reliable airline. But the Pierre Cardin uniform was a giant leap forward in our image as a modern airline. My own role had been marginal. I had been merely the liaison between the airline and the designer. It had been Asghar Khan’s idea and he had stood his ground. In the cultural context of Pakistani society, it was both a bold and imaginative decision.

The final tribute came when the European staff at our foreign stations that had balked at wearing the shalwar-kameez demanded that they be issued the Pierre Cardin uniform. As for Pierre Cardin, he became even more famous. He hadn’t designed the uniform for money. As best I recall, we paid him something like $1,200 which even in the ‘60s was not a lot of money. But we had both gained. That’s what’s called a good bargain.