08 August 2013
BEIRUT: The dress, in shocking poppy red, was not your grandmothers abaya. The sheer chiffon sleeves that fluttered down the runway gave a subtle nod to North African caftan; organic lotuses drew from Persian embroidery patterns; and the collarless silk-trimmed slit at its neck was the only thing planting the dress in the Levant. On a different continent and on a high-end runway, this dress would have been called simply caftan and ogled by jet-setting Western elite wanting to look cultured and bohemian. But here it was referred to as abaya not Merriam Websters entry of a black shapeless shroud but rather an artisanal garment incorporating elements of historic Levantine dress and worn by those proud of their cultural heritage.
Brides love them ... for the honeymoon. Women like to wear them in the evening when they have guests. Some wear it over a swimsuit for the beach. Its sheer, so you can also just wear around the house, said Nadine Waked, of Artisanat Waked, which specializes in abayas and other crafts.
In spite of the flood of Western fashion at the turn of the 20th century, the embroidered artisanal abaya in Lebanon remains popular among women.
Many young women have mothers or grandmothers who made a point to pick up handmade abayas on trips to Damascus, and can still distinguish between motifs from Syria and Palestine.
But over the last 50 years, international designers have mashed up embroidery, patterns, prints and terminology from all corners of the Middle East, North Africa and sometimes India. Recently, another wave of growing demand here and abroad for such hybrid creations has pushed local abaya makers to modernize their craft.
Artisanat Waked exemplifies that change. Thirty-five years ago, Wakeds mother opened the shop for sewn crafts like abayas, tablecloths and shawls. Today, her daughters have rebranded the company with the slogan Feel history in a trendy way, a reference to their products mixture of historical and contemporary motifs.
Nadine and her sister Rola said they saw their job as preserving the traditional crafts and dress by tweaking them to make them desirable among modern women.
We as young people want to further the fashion trends, but we cannot forget the importance of this kind of craft, Waked said.
To accommodate the modern customer, theyve shortened skirts and sleeves, incorporated modern prints, lightened the fabrics, dropped necklines and brightened the overall color palette.
In some cases, artisans are modernizing by looking closer to home than the Western runways.
For example, Waked still offers modest, long-sleeve abayas, but they too combine motifs from different regional dress: A square of Palestinian-inspired embroidery, or a Bedouin sash around the waist.
Regional pop culture inspired the abayas of Khozama Naamani Dbaybo. She created a chartreuse abaya with an open pink floral jacket inspired by Harim Soltan, a Turkish TV series dubbed in Arabic.
She also updated traditional motifs. For example, she added the hand of Fatima in jeweled studs to the front of an abaya that she dubbed her best-seller.
International interest in traditional dress from the Middle East and North Africa hit its first peak in the 1960s, when wealthy Western hippies made Moroccan caftans the epitome of liberal, bohemian dress. The long, loose garments were chiseled into the history books of style by the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Vreeland.
Henceforth called the caftan, as were many spinoff creations, the loose-sleeved, summer dress saw resurgent seasons on runways and some designers have made it perennial staple of their collections.
For example, Oscar de la Renta has included a caftan or two in most of his collections. One of his recent designs a white caftan with black geometric trim was for sale online for more than 1,000 pounds ($1,500) and recently sold out on high-end online retailer Net-a-Porter.
On the runways for spring-summer 2013, the so-called Oriental style was a major theme across runways in New York and Paris. Elements like embroidery, silk dying and tunics were all plentiful, something the Waked sisters were quick to point out as they explained the stylishness of their embroidered creations.
Global interest in this style has allowed Artisanat Waked to break into international markets.
They sell their trendy spins on the abaya in Mykonos, Singapore, France and Romania, as well as in Arab markets like Kuwait.
Some Lebanese designers jumped into the fray to focus solely on Western-fusion caftan. Amal Azhari designs high-end pieces, many of which rely on a giant rectangular cut from meters of fabric.
She adds elements inspired by local motifs like beading or embroidery around a V-neck, as well as contemporary graphic prints or Japanese kimono-inspired imagery like dragons. After five years in the business, Azhari said shes gotten overwhelming feedback from friends and regular clients whove taken up wearing caftans after finding her designs.
Her dresses, and those like them, offer a bridge of continuity between Western fashion and more conservative Islamic dress found in the Gulf two style cultures sometimes painted as diametrically opposed.
In Saudi Arabia, they go to many big occasions like the suhoor or the iftar and sometimes in Dubai they go on their boats or to the beach wearing my caftan with a slip underneath to make it more conservative, she said. In Europe or in Brazil, the women wear it to the beach or over their bathing suits with no slip.
With the influence of international trends on local artisans, is there any longer a difference between the caftan and abaya? For historical gurus, well of course there is.
Azhari explained that the caftan was a traditional robe worn by sultans and their royal entourages. The abaya refers to something worn over other clothes, she said. For example hostess might wear an open abaya over a sheer chemise or pajamas should house guests pay an unexpected visit.
The evolution and marriage of the two along with other Middle Eastern garb has perhaps made the distinction between a trendy caftan and contemporary abaya a game of semantics. But its because these lines have been blurred that you can find pride at places like Zara, as one of their mass-produced caftan tunics look like a shortened version of the abaya hanging in your great aunts closet.
Copyright The Daily Star 2013.
