Paris Fashion Week Reveals Burqa Ban Contradictions

Fashion week in Paris, and after a display of pink and purple mini-dresses in an elegant apartment near the presidential palace, an assistant wheels out a rack bearing two very different creations: black abayas.

The billowing gowns, usually worn with a veil, have been made for the Saudi market by Paris-based couturier Adam Jones.

As France considers banning full facial veils such as the niqab and the burqa, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has said is not welcome here, the fact that it is a major exporter of couture abayas may seem odd.

But that is just one of the many contradictions exposed by the latest clash between secularism and religion in the home of Europe’s largest Muslim community.

“If someone tells me, ‘design an abaya,’ why not, I’m proud of that. It’s just a garment,” haute couture designer Stephane Rolland, who has made many abayas for Middle Eastern clients, told Reuters backstage after his fashion show in Paris.

While French designers are wooing Saudi clients in airy showrooms, across town in the working-class neighborhood of Belleville the picture is very different.

“If you wear the veil, you get insulted and attacked all the time, you get called a terrorist,” said Ikram Es-Salhi, a 20-year-old student standing outside the Zeina Pret-A-Porter shop that sells mass-produced headscarves, tunics and abayas.

The article in its entirety is worth a read, as it tackles a number of complexities found in the potential burqa ban: commerce occasionally trumping personal principles, women’s rights (whether the choice is to don or forsake items like abayas or burqas), xenophobia, and the discrepancies found in mainstream society’s treatment and acceptance of the wealthy versus the more impoverished sector of a particular ethnic and/or religious group.