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| An Iraqi model presents a dress during the 2015 Baghdad Fashion Show at the Iraqi capital's Royal Tulip Hotel |
Models in designer clothes strutted down a catwalk in front of Baghdad's high society on Friday for a fashion show that tickled one generation's nostalgia and filled the next one with hope.
Umm Mustafa and her husband cancelled all their family duties, bought new clothes and spent a whole week preparing for the first edition of the Baghdad Fashion Show.
"The last show we saw was in 1988 at the Palestine hotel," she said, wearing a burgundy suit with flowery prints and candy floss pink nail varnish assorted to her smartphone cover.
"We love fashion and design... It's the security situation that has affected everything. There's development here but no opportunity to show the world," said her husband, also in his late forties.
Despite Iraq's eight-year war with Iran, Baghdad in the eighties had a vibrant cultural life and its society was less religiously conservative.
Around 500 people turned out in their best attire to watch 16 young Iraqi women model collections by six home-grown designers Friday as an oriental beat shook the walls of the luxurious Royal Tulip hotel's gala hall. » | AFP | Saturday, March 14, 2015
