Zain Ali: Love, legacy, and craft meet in ZN ALI

Everything that British-Pakistani designer and creative mind Zain Ali creates—including his brand, ZN ALI—is rooted in love for his family, his culture(s), and his craft. This love is no mere limerence; it’s an unconditional bond that divaricates through every piece Zain puts out into the world. The designer speaks of his affinity for his craft with the bashful reticence of someone describing the pull toward their soulmate: “I’m instinctive with my creativity,” the designer tells Dazed MENA. “I can’t always figure out what drives me to do what I do except my love of it, which makes it exciting. 

Born in Lahore and moving to the United Kingdom at age five, Zain’s life has been one of constant negotiation between worlds—places, histories, and identities that he has learned to meld rather than compartmentalise. Having spent his formative years in a predominantly white, working-class town, this sense of estrangement from society pushed him to examine his identity as a fluid, evolving state. It’s this probing of the self that the designer wants to drive with his work. “I hope to grow to be the most honest version of myself,” Zain admits to Dazed MENA. “Putting yourself out there takes a lot of vulnerability, and it has made me grow more than anything else.”

In his twenties, having acquired a degree in religion, philosophy, and ethics, along with a postgraduate degree in law, Zain made a deliberate return to Lahore. Seeking to reconnect with the land and people that his family migrated from, the designer returned armed with an iteration of what ‘belonging’ was meant to feel like. It was this trip, along with his subsequent rummaging through his family’s archives, that laid the foundation for the concept of his ZN ALI. His first collection spawned as an experimental chronicle of how his family used to dress, with designs reminiscent of those found in Delhi, Agra, Lahore, Karachi, and even London. 

ZN ALI came to form a comprehensive honouring of Ali’s heritage, with the tales of nostalgia, memory, and migration it entails. The label uses colour—warm, grounded tones—and silhouettes—that billow with a practised structure—to form a homage to the unpartitioned India of his ancestors. As ZN ALI appreciates the facets of the designer’s identity without apology, its founder is signalling for other creatives across the SWANA region to deploy their culture as modes of expression, impervious to reductive framing: “We are perceived before we’ve spoken, and boxed no matter how much we challenge the status quo for ourselves,” Zain observes. 

His work has gained recognition far beyond the confines of his own cultural spheres. Zain has dressed actor and rapper Riz Ahmed in his brand’s ‘Rahat’ trousers for the cover of British GQ and designed costumes for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre—becoming the first South Asian designer to receive such an honour. “I got the offer the day I saw an exhibition on Mugler’s design for Shakespeare’s Globe in New York,” Zain’s language gleaned that there was a romantic serendipity to the accomplishment. “I was so enamoured. It all felt connected.”

In this devotion to connection, Zain is a proponent of establishing genuine friendships within his network of artists in the SWANA region to nourish and find strength in each other’s thoughts. “I’m building a supportive family of artists who champion and support one another, who engage in each other’s creative process,” he says. “When we get together, we hardly talk about work and instead find all of the life experiences we share and what we love about each other’s cultures. You never feel alone when you find artists around the world who share your values.”

In discussing his creative process with Dazed, Ali quoted these words from Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi: “I look at my life as residue. The advantages are that you can modify it. It is a malleable residue. I look at life that way. In all my designs I leave a gap somewhere for the residue. I call it breathing. That is where life comes from. Because that little thing is why life is and life is not measurable. But that is what you must search for, all the time. Then you’re free.” Zain explains that he always tries to leave room for this breathing space, as this is where the best creations take place. 

Zain’s next chapter of his journey includes a solo exhibition that honours the history of South Asian labour in Britain’s textile industry—another story to be told of migration, regional politics, resilience, and cultural transformation. While the designer prepares to tell another tale through his work, Zain remains guided by the same desire that has defined his creative past so far: a desire to connect, remember, and create the breathing space for stories that deserve to be heard. 

As much as love is his impetus, Zain is a reflexive artist, hoping to compound this resource as a product of his art: “I would like to feel I have given back as much love and support that has been granted to me through the stories I tell in my work.”