France/Netherlands: Designer Muslim dress

France/Netherlands: Designer Muslim dress


This Friday Showroom Mama (Showroom for Media and Moving Art) will hold a fashion show for young Muslim women, featuring designs by Mada van Gaans and Emily Hermans, in the Dutch town of Eindhoven.


A group of young fashion-minded women, mostly second generation Moslem clearly stands out in our society. MSLM shows the fashion of this group. Because these young women grew up in the Netherlands, because they are Dutch, their background creates a fashion-clash which results in new interesting forms and silhouettes for both Moslem and non-Moslem women. Designers are inspired and influenced by this, use elements of another culture or design custom-fit products. From traditional to trendy, from the Mid-East to the West.


By MSLM MAMA is showing how we can play in to the wishes of this group of girls whom, with their extra frame of rules and their colourful background, have specific demands for the way they dress. MAMA is very curious to what the industry has planned for them!


Sources: Style Today(Dutch), Showroom Mama (Dutch/English)
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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."


(more)


Source: Telegraph (English)

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