Battling hijab hair and the basic black wardrobe, Belinda Jackson finds fashion flourishing in Iran.
Sinfully early in the morning, as I wait my turn to pass through Iranian customs at Tehran airport, I watch a Chinese girl being rejected from entering the world's first Islamic republic because she isn't wearing a headscarf. Iran's Islamic dress code, or hijab, requires all females above the age of nine to cover their heads. The Chinese tourist doesn't appear to speak English or Farsi and she radiates confusion.
Finally, a businessman in the queue takes the limp lime green scarf from her hand and ever-so-tenderly covers her hair, knotting the cloth under her chin. She smiles gratefully and is let loose.
As far as opening lines go, the phrase “I'm doing a story on fashion in Iran” raises eyebrows and outbreaks of giggles outside the country.
The most common perception of Iranian fashion is the all-black, all-encompassing chador that cloaks a woman from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Photographing a woman in a chador is surely like photographing a black hole – it's as if a void has walked into your camera's lens.
In reality, chadors are worn only by women from very traditional or religious families, while most others opt for the more liberating roopoosh or manteau, a mid-thigh coat that is buttoned or zippered down and belted at the waist. Chic Tehrani girls push the boundaries, the shorter and tighter the better. In fact, the even more conservative niqab, where the women's face is veiled, leaving only her eyes visible, is almost unheard of now in Iran and long skirts are so out.
Fashion is well and truly alive, even in a country where it is illegal for women – Iranian or foreign, Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian – to appear in public with their heads bare, where arms and legs should be covered and where bright lipstick, considered a siren of sexuality, is frowned upon.