Posted on 06/28/2009 1:40:50 PM PDT by Steelfish
Abaya gets a makeover from John Galliano and Blumarine
Top European fashion labels, including John Galliano and Blumarine, have sent models in couture abayas down the runway in an effort to lure wealthy Muslim women.
26 Jun 2009
[Pics in URL]
A horsewoman in a flowing, made-to-measure Islamic gown atop a snorting steed opened the fashion show on Thursday at the George V Hotel in Paris.
Abayas are the body-covering black robes some Muslim women don over their clothing in public, usually accompanied by a head scarf or niqab, the face veil that covers all but the eyes.
Designers who tried their hand at making over the abaya, which is required in Saudi Arabia, included Christian Dior's artistic director John Galliano, French luxury labels Nina Ricci and Jean Claude Jitrois and Italian houses Blumarine and Alberta Feretti.
The show began with a bang, as the carrot-topped cavaliere - decked out in a Galliano-designed abaya exploding with firework of coloured sequins and dangling fringe - rode her mount into the hotel's subterranean salon.
Twenty models followed on foot, wearing abayas heavy with rhinestones or airy in gauzy fabrics.
"I realised that most of the Saudi clients are wearing designer brands, but they're covered by a black abaya," said Dania Tarhini, the show's organiser and a general manager of Saks Fifth Avenue in Saudi Arabia. "It is an obligation to wear the abaya there, but let them feel good about it."
The timing of the Paris show was propitious: four days earlier, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, struck a nerve in the Muslim world by declaring that full-body veils such as the burka are "not welcome" in France, saying they make women prisoners.
A top Muslim group in Britain called Mr Sarkozy "patronising and offensive." Lebanon's most influential Shia cleric ...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
why don’t all women in Western Europe and American don the abaya and get it over with/sarc
Following your logic line you started for me:
Maybe that would stop crime?
But sales of suntan oils would go down. Hummm! Would that cause a market slump?
Thanks for the pic post! The women look pretty!
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