Paris: Fashion week in Paris, and after a display of pink and purple mini-dresses in an elegant apartment near the presidential palace, an assistant wheels out a rack bearing two very different creations: black abayas.
The billowing gowns, usually worn with a veil, have been made for the Saudi market by Paris-based couturier Adam Jones. As France considers banning full facial veils such as the niqab and the burqa, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has said “is not welcome here”, the fact that it is a major exporter of couture abayas may seem odd.
But that is just one of the many contradictions exposed by the latest clash between secularism and religion in the home of Europe’s largest Muslim community. “If someone tells me, ‘design an abaya,’ why not, I’m proud of that. It’s just a garment,” designer Stephane Rolland, who has made many abayas for Middle Eastern clients, said backstage after his fashion show in Paris.
When asked about the broader debate whether veils are a sign of subservience and should be outlawed, his confidence wavered. “I don’t want to speak about religion, that’s a different subject. But I don’t want to cover the woman—alas, I don’t want to think about that,” he said before turning away.
While French designers are wooing Saudi clients in airy showrooms, across town in the workingclass neighbourhood of Belleville the picture is very different. “If you wear the veil, you get insulted and attacked all the time, you get called a terrorist,” said Ikram Es-Salhi, 20-year-old student.
Es-Salhi wears a long brown veil that covers her head and body but leaves her face open. She would like to wear the full niqab, but it is banned at her college. She already switched from her preferred course of study, nursing, to sociology as nurses are not allowed to wear veils.
Many feminists not only in the West see the veil as an expression of a spreading ideology that wants to hide and silence women, undoing years of struggle for women’s rights.
However, mayors from various French cities have said more veiled women are turning up at wedding ceremonies or at schools to pick up their children, refusing to bare their faces even for identification.
Meanwhile, the powder blue Afghan burqa, a tent-like garment that covers women from top to toe, is in fact rare in Paris, and even the niqab is not often seen. At Zeina Pret-A-Porter, the shopkeeper says very few customers buy it.
From the outside, the full niqab presents an impenetrable black front. From the inside, the gauze allows a limited view of the world.
But even those who find the garment odious do not necessarily believe a ban on them is the best way to get rid of it. REUTERS
No comments:
Post a Comment