first International women's festival - tehran

bargeboo: in the recent years in iran there has been a boom in official fashion for women. what do i mean by official? until now, the well-to-do iranians, young and old, have followed fashion closely, both men and especially women. because of clothing restrictions outdoors, for women much of the fashionable efforts - in public - has been reduced to variations on the length of the mantous (long coats, worn by women), width and height of the pants’ cuffs, colour and fabric of the head scarf, or even the way it is worn, the way the hair is left out on the front of the face, whether or not any hair is showing on the back, and so on. the differences are sometimes subtle but they are followed religiously. in the recent years because of relaxed or rather ignored governmental restrictions, these codes have extended to how much skin is shown by short short mantous in light see-through fabrics, open sandals on toes adorned with latest in nail polish and head scarves that barely cover anything at all.

"notice to respected shoppers: we will strongly prevent the entry of any bad-hijab women, especially those with short and three-quarter pants, thin and tight scarves, heavy make-up, or with other bad-hijab manifestations. -- jam-e jam department store management" (curtasy of www.iranian.com). these codes apply to men as well, but perhaps not as aggressively. they now wear short-sleeved t-shirts with designs on the front, long ponytails, jeans that are tight fitting, open toed sandals and sometimes even shorts. to a westerner who lives in a relatively accommodating society, which cares less about what you wear, these variations might sound too subtle to be important. however, those who experienced the first ten-fifteen years of oppression under the islamic regime in iran, particularly while ayatollah khomeini was alive can recall days when faces were slashed with razor as punishment for make up or paint was thrown on boys with short-sleeved shirts or even buzz cuts for those had too radical of a haircut. many were taken to jail and lashed for indecency.

anyway, i regress. in the recent years, its seems that finally the government has accepted that fashion or rather the drive to individualization through clothing will remain a prominent part of most societies, iran included. there has been some support for publicly arranged “fashion shows” that adhere to official islamic codes. these events restricted to female attendants only, started as models outfitted in head to toe outfits, hair covered, and hardly any skin showing. the designs, heavily inspired by traditional and nomadic influences of various cultural heritages in iran were either too whimsical or too plain. however, little by little small details of these ideas seem to trickle into the main stream especially in a boom in popularity of traditional patterns in fabrics.

recently at the first women’s forum in tehran, another one of these shows was put on and as you can see from the photos, much has changed from the early days. bellow is a translation of a report written on this show:

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<< source: http://www.irwomenfestival.com/news/000028.html >>
september 14th, 2003

The first “women’s festival” in Tehran, Iran ended on September 14th, 2003. In 7 days more than 600 items of clothing was on display. Mrs. Forughi, instructor of fashion design program, in Alzahra university (all women’s university, Iran) worked closely with, another instructor, Mrs. Shakkoopa and some of the students to organize and put together this fashion show. No event of this kind has ever been put on stage in Iran, [after the Islamic Revolution in 1973].

Mrs. Forughi in an interview commented that clothing design is an artistic expression and she believed that putting on shows of this kind encourages other designers to showcase their work and feel encouraged to be more creative. Around 45 designers participated in this years show. Mrs. Avan, an experienced clothing shop owner in Tehran spoke of her motivation for attendance as wanting to participate in women’s only festival. Other participants however, were also clearly interested in sales and advertising their designs.

An interesting part of the program included works of Mrs. Hasanzadeh, a young instructor of the above mentioned school. She had made creative use of some unconventional material in her designs such as garbage bags, construction paper and burlap to design several beautiful outfits, which were met with much enthusiasm from the audience.

pictures courtesy off "first international women’s festival website", updated and maintained by a team of talented Iranian web designers, including "khorshid khanoom".