Tags
Afghanistan, clothing, hair, Issey Miyake, Morocco, Saudi Arabia
Maman had once shown me a handsome burqua grillagée which she had bought when the Moroccan government closed down their manufacture and sale. It was deep blue and had the very fine pleats one associates with Issey Miyake. She had bought ten, she said, some jet black, some in the range of blues (blue is typical of Afghanistan, black of Saudi Arabia); the government had ordered all stock be liquidated within 48 hours. She had for many years had a collection of chadors, some of silk and wool, some of silk and cotton, in ivory, black, tobacco brown, maroon; one could not know where one would travel, and it might be convenient to change one’s style of dress in conservative districts.
In my own closet I later found a three-quarter-length coat with three-quarter-length sleeves in pistachio shantung—pistachio being, of course, one of the few colors which can be worn by a blonde and also by one wiith chestnut hair.
(Helen DeWitt, The English Understand Wool)