01
نمائشShow, 2001
سرحدLahore · 1954
سرحدUrdu — border, frontier, the line between
Collection I · 2026Lahore · Since 1954
SARHAD
The border is not between two places. It is between two centuries.
The house — scroll01The archiveذخیرہ
Nothing here is new.
Sarhad has worked out of one building in Lahore since 1954, on frames that have not changed. What comes out each season is drawn from what is already in the room — patterns come off the shelf, get altered, and go back.
These are the house's own photographs of it: shows, fittings, a stairwell at one in the morning. None of it was styled and most was never meant to be kept.
02
نمائشShow, 1998
03
زینہStairwell, undated
04
زینہStairwell
02The clothکپڑا
Collection I.
Nine pieces, shot by lamplight over eight months. Gold thread needs a moving flame to do what it does, so nothing here was lit any other way.
I
ریشمResham on silk crêpe
Ivory, drawn tight at the waist and left to fall. The gold runs one line from collar to hem — a single placket, eleven days on the frame, nothing else anywhere on the piece.
II
زردوزیZardozi on raw silk
The vine climbs the skirt in six panels and stops short of the hem, so the eye finishes the line itself. Two karigars worked opposite sides of one frame for five weeks to keep the halves matched.
III
دبکاDabka on silk velvet
Velvet takes coiled wire better than any other ground because it holds the stitch without puckering. The border is one continuous scallop — begun at the left seam and closed at the same seam nine days later.
IV
ریشمResham buti
Sage is the hardest ground in the collection to light. Each buti is worked separately and placed by eye rather than to a grid, which is why the scatter reads as falling rather than as printed.
V
زردوزیZardozi and pearl
Pearl over gold, which is the house's oldest combination and the slowest — every pearl is knotted rather than glued, so the piece survives being sat down in.
VI
ریشمRaised rose
Every rose is built up in floss silk and wired from behind so it stands off the cloth. The belt is the only hard element; everything above and below it is deliberately soft.
VII
دبکاDabka on velvet
Silver on indigo is the hardest pairing in the house — the wire disappears if the ground is a shade too light. The cape is sheer so the work reads twice, once through it and once beside it.
VIII
چکنChikan and resham
White on rose, worked so densely the ground barely shows. The quietest piece in the collection and the one that takes longest: there is no motif to hide behind, so every stitch is on show.
IX
ریشمResham on georgette
The last nine inches of a dupatta. Every leaf is stitched through both faces of the georgette, which is why the hem holds its scallop instead of collapsing the moment it moves.
03The frameاڈا
This is the whole claim.
Two hands, a hooked ari needle, and gold laid onto velvet stretched taut on an adda. Everything else on this page is a consequence of this photograph.
اڈاThe adda — Lahore
- زردوزیZardozi
- Metal-wound thread, couched by hand
- دبکاDabka
- Coiled wire, laid in relief
- ریشمResham
- Floss silk, satin and stem stitch
- شیشہShisha
- Mirror, caught under a worked ring
340hrs
The longest single panel in the collection
9hands
Karigars on one frame at a time
0prints
Nothing in the collection is printed
نقشہThe naqsha — pricked, then dusted through
04The fittingناپ
What you are agreeing to.
Nothing is stocked and nothing is sized. Each piece is cut to the wearer and worked to order, and the embroidery alone runs eight to fourteen weeks — longer for a bridal panel. Read this before you write; it is most of the commission.
- کارخانہAtelier
- Lahore
- مدتLead time
- 8–14 weeks
- ناپFittings
- Three, minimum
- سلائیSizing
- Cut to measure — no size chart
- ترسیلShipping
- Worldwide, insured