Islam influencing fashion

The forecast for the new fashion season is as somber as it is certain. It is going to be a long dark winter.

After a decade of free-fall hipster pants, bared midriffs, bras on show under sheer dresses and naked legs, fashion has started on its great coverup. Forget girlie frills and celebrities flashing flesh on the red carpet. The typical outfit in the current international fashion collections is in any color as long as it is black with a silhouette long, lean and layered.

The mood is now for a chaste sobriety, with sturdy fabrics, thick leggings and even ankle-length hemlines.

The world's leading designers have no doubts as to where fashion is headed as they talk about "restraint" and "sobriety."

"I think 'modesty' is a beautiful word today - and a beautiful attitude," says Lanvin's Alber Elbaz, who has built his career on designing dresses with a respectful attitude to women.

Marc Jacobs, founding father of the girl-woman aesthetic, shocked the audience at his New York show last month with hefty knits, leg warmers and thick layers of clothes shrouding the body. The new sobriety: Covering up the body

KABUL (Reuters) - Models strode down a catwalk in the Afghan capital Kabul for the first time in decades this weekend as two designers showed off their clothes behind the guarded walls of a luxury hotel.

An audience of expatriates and well-heeled Afghan watched the show in hotel garden, under a clear midsummer night's sky, to the strains of traditional Afghan music.

All of the models showing the conservatively cut clothes that included designer burqas were expatriate women, to the disappointment of some in the audience.

The organisers said they did not want to court controversy in what is a deeply conservative Muslim country by having Afghan models.

"We invited a lot of Afghan women to attend the show but not to be models," said Italian designer Gabriella Ghidoni, who organised the show with an Afghan partner.

The Taliban forced women to wear the all-enveloping burqa but nearly five years after the hard-line Islamists were ousted, many women still choose to wear burqas when they are out. Afghanistan gets first fashion show in decades

Photo courtesy of The Scotsman

Mark Alexander