Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa Fashion, Turn To The West

– There’s A Brand New Dress, But I Don’t Know It’s Name… —

Vassup?! The global center of haute couture may be shifting from Paris to … Afghanistan?

Reuters News reports that sales of burqas in Afghanistan have dropped 50% at some stores since the Taliban was ousted from power in 2001.

It seems women in Afghanistan, reveling in their new found freedom, have decided dressing like a sock puppet in 110 degree heat is just sooo 13th century.

In an effort to dress more trendy than ever before — and by “more trendy” I mean like a cloistered nun in the Middle Ages — Afghani women are embracing the chador namaz which is just like the burqa except it has an opening for your face.

In the decadent capital of Kabul, it’s been reported women have even taken to sporting the mantau chalvar, a long coat worn over pants and accompanied by a mandatory head scarf.

How up-to-the-minute is the mantau chalvar? It’s so right now it doesn’t even come up on a Google picture search — making it even rarer than pre-release photos of the iPhone.

Shopkeeper Nehmatullah Yusefy is not new to the fashion industry, but still struggles to keep up with the fast pace of change in an industry that seems to come out with new styles every seven or eight centuries.

“I think, God willing, the sales of burqas will decrease, then I will sell chador namaz and even maybe mantau chalvar,” said the shopkeeper.

“Of course, we’re also looking to diversify into the lucrative Halloween market in the U.S.,” noted Yusefy.

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“Is too early for … how do you say … ‘trick or treat?’”
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“We tailor-make every burqa to create a much more realistic ghost costume than just a plain bedsheet with eye-holes,” explained Yusefy. “We even had one customer ask us to hand-stitch real goat hair to the burqa so their kid could go as Cousin It from the Addams Family.”

“There’s just no end to the fun you can have,” the shopkeeper continued. “One lady was so creative she crazy-glued a large tree branch to the back of the burqa and went as a cocoon.”

In a related story, Reebok has announced that spokes-model Kendra Wilkinson has no plans to visit Kabul in the near future.

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Sexier than the chador namaz? You make the call…

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Image: Zuma Press

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