Claim: A photo of a model walking on a ramp with a plaster cast on her leg during a fashion show in Pakistan. The model’s look is apparently inspired by the cast Imran Khan wore on his leg following a gun attack in 2022.
Fact: The image is doctored. It is from a 2016 fashion event and actually shows the model without any cast on her leg.
On 23 February 2023, Pakistani politician and lawmaker Irum Azeem Farooque — who has been associated with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) — posted a picture (archive) showing a fashion model walking a ramp while wearing an orthopaedic cast on her leg.
The cast the model is wearing in the picture, which Farooque captioned as, “A Politically Fashionable statement,” bears a striking resemblance to the one worn by the PTI chief and the former prime minister, Imran Khan, after he was injured during a shooting incident at his rally in Wazirabad in Punjab in November 2022.
Imran Khan wore the cast for a few weeks before he started walking again.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check ascertained first that the image is from the 17th PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week (PSFW), which took place in 2016 and was organised by the Pakistan Fashion Design Council (PFDC), as is visible from the text appearing in the model’s background.
We also tried searching for news of the PSFW being held recently, but there have been none ever since the COVID-19 lockdowns. The Facebook page of the PFDC (archive) was last updated on 10 June 2020 and there have been no updates there either.
We then looked through photographs from the different iterations of the PSFW over the years to match the model’s attire and found it on a blog called ‘Fashion Central’, which documents various events from the industry. The article, published on 24 February 2017, is titled, “Deepak Perwani “The Return of the DPhilosophy” Collection at PSFW 16” (archive).
We also found a picture of the same model from the same event but from a different angle. This image was shot by Dubai-based photographer Ibrahim Nagi, who published it on his website in an article titled, “How to Shoot Ramp Walk Fashion Show” (archive).
It is also available on his Instagram profile as well as his Flickr account here (archive), where the date the photo was taken is mentioned as 13 March 2016 and the date of upload is 28 July 2016.
In addition, Soch Fact Check came across a post by Twitter user @Z__AC (archive), which carries two more images featuring fashion models sporting casts on their legs. The tweet has been viewed more than 3,200 times.
The tweet is captioned as follows:
“Breaking: Legendary fashion designer @DPerwani disgusted by trashy Pakistani politics has been honoured by being allowed to introduce the classy Kaptaan Palastar in his spring summer collection We expect it will be a bigger hit than the Kaptaan Chappal!”
The tweet appears to be the origin of the viral photo, as @Z__AC — in response to a comment stating the editing is not good enough — wrote (archive), “Muft mey aisi hi hoti hai [This is [the result] when it is done for free].”
However, these pictures are also doctored. The image showing a man and a woman is from over a decade ago when fashion designer Deepak Perwani — on the left — presented his work at the Colombo Fashion Week held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 19 February 2009.
The image is available on Reuters Pictures here (archive), as well as British stock photography agency Alamy here (archive), and is credited to photographer Nir Elias.
The next image showing a model wearing a sherwani and a turban is available on Deepak Perwani’s website (archive) but without a date of publication.
We copied the text available on the page and used it in Google search to check the first-time indexing date, which we found to be October 2019.
The picture also appeared on a fashion blog here (archive) as early as 16 January 2019.
Soch Fact Check concludes that all three pictures are doctored. We have also created a visual comparison below:
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the doctored image published here, here, here, and here on Twitter, here on Facebook, and here on Instagram.
Interestingly, TV show host Shiffa Z. Yousafzai also shared the image with a different caption — “Absolute Nonsense! Hitting the rock bottom of morality.” — but deleted it later.
Conclusion: The image is doctored. It is from a 2016 fashion event and actually shows the model without any cast on her leg.