Zain Ahmad

Zain Ahmad is the founder and creative director of Pakistani menswear brand Rastah, a Lahore-based fashion house reinterpreting South Asian craft for a global audience.

Started in 2018, the brand quickly gained a cult following for its craft-forward, fusion aesthetic, scaling to reach seven figures in revenue in 2025 with no outside investment.

The brand has staged sold-out pop ups across cities including New York, London and Paris, making Ahmad one of the first Pakistani designers to reach such a level of international recognition. Celebrities from Timothée Chalamet and Justin Bieber to Zayn Malik and Riz Ahmed have worn the brand.

Rastah’s success has helped spark a broader movement across Pakistan and South Asia, with other founders now building labels around the same principle of centring artisanship in contemporary clothing for a global audience.

Originally from Lahore, Ahmad grew up between Pakistan, London and Toronto. Rastah started as a student project when he was at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he got a bachelors in Political Economy. In his fourth year, Ahmad returned to Pakistan, driven by his passion for storytelling and local textile traditions to work directly with artisans like hand weavers and block printers. These skilled craftspeople remain at the heart of Rastah's operations today, helping it grow to become an internationally recognised business with a showroom presence in Paris.