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‘Fashion is resistance’: The Afghan designers championing traditional dress

‘Fashion is resistance’: The Afghan designers championing traditional dress

SONIA ELKS KABUL-BORN fashion designer Anjilla Seddeqi has long drawn inspiration for her formalwear collections from the bright, intricate and embellished traditional dress of Afghan women. But now, with the Taliban back in power, she and other emigre Afghan women are championing their homeland's rich clothing heritage to protest against a new dress code for female students, and help women affected by the movement's return. "I feel like what the Taliban are trying to do is to eradicate Afghan women from society in general, and then to also eradicate our culture. And part of that is our dress," Seddeqi, 39,…
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‘This is how we dress’: Afghan women overseas pose in colourful attire

‘This is how we dress’: Afghan women overseas pose in colourful attire

ZEBA SIDDIQUI AFGHAN youth rights activist Wazhma Sayle says she was shocked to see a photograph online, apparently of women dressed in black all-enveloping niqabs and gowns, staging a demonstration in support of the country's new Taliban rulers at Kabul University. The 36-year-old, who is based in Sweden, later posted a photograph of herself on Twitter dressed in a bright green and silver dress captioned: "This is Afghan culture & how we dress! Anything less then this does not represent Afghan women!" "It's a fight for our identity," Sayle said in a telephone interview. "I don't want to be identified…
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Journalists in hiding to IPS: silencing women journalists, is silencing the voice of Afghan women

Journalists in hiding to IPS: silencing women journalists, is silencing the voice of Afghan women

ZOFEEN EBRAHIM  “IF I fall into the hands of the Taliban, not only me but my family will be killed,” said AB, 23*, who worked as a broadcast journalist for the past seven years and is a well-known face on the television screen. Speaking on WhatsApp from her hideout in a city close to the capital Kabul, she said the Taliban came looking for her and were asking about her whereabouts from her neighbours, who, in turn, warned her family. “The Taliban have started house-to-house search and when they could not find me, left a warning with our neighbours to…
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