Pakistani fashionistas gathered in the country's largest city this week for Karachi Fashion Week, which opened on Wednesday 4th Nov 2009.

Designers, models, photographers and fashion-conscious members of the public have defied militant threats to celebrate couture culture, in a riot of glamour which wouldn't look out of place during fashion weeks in London, Milan, Paris or New York.

Staging Karachi Fashion Week has not been without its problems. It's already been postponed by almost a month due to the potential for militant attacks on an event which dares to bare.

Hopes of attracting top international designers and models to Karachi were scuppered after a wave of high profile terror attacks across the country.

Karachi Fashion Week has, however, attracted 35 top Pakistani designers, many of whom are well known in South Asia. And designers like Deepak Perwani and Maheen Khan, who recently attended Milan fashion week.

Most of Pakistan's top female models are at the event, taking to the catwalks in defiance not only of Taliban threats but local social norms in this often conservative Muslim country.

Top local model Nadia Hussain, a married mother-of-two and qualified dentist, helped launch the inaugural shows of the week on opening night. "The fashion was never this big, but it has always been present in Pakistan and now fashion is becoming bigger," she explains.

Said she further, "With events like this, it is definitely becoming bigger and I think that the future of any industry in Pakistan, not only fashion, not only us models, but the fashion industry - as in music or arts and crafts or any industry - is going to survive in Pakistan only if the security and the situation in Pakistan is going to remain stable."

Among the first Pakistani designers to show their collections on Wednesday evening were Sonya Battla and Samar Mehdi. Battla told journalists that her designs celebrated strong women.

Mehdi, who studied fashion at Bristol University, said her latest women's wear collections 'Midsummer Night Dreams' and 'Scarlet' showed glamorous silhouettes. Karachi Fashion Week organiser Ayesha Tammy, described as a 'fashion matriarch', acknowledges the turmoil which is engulfing Pakistan.

"Our designers did not want to cancel this event. They did not want to postpone it. They did not want to cancel it. They wanted it to go ahead and in fact they have all pledged money for the bomb victims in Peshawar, and our slogan is 'Fashion Cares'."

The four-day-long Karachi Fashion Week is being held as Pakistani forces continue to battle entrenched Taliban and other militant fighters in the remote, rugged South Waziristan region.