Where Age-Old Styles Prevail

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 97, 27 April 1938, Page 14

Where Age-Old Styles Prevail

GOVERNMENT edicts as to the attire of Muhammadan women may be effective in Turkey, but they have not yet changed the age-old manners of the African deserts. In fact, little of modernism has touched the women of North Africa, even in the towns. In the country and on the oases of Morocco and Algeria the ancient ways are practically unaltered. Unfortunately, this cleavage to the old customs symbolises the general state of Muhammadan women here, especially in French Algeria. The woman of wealth is pampered like a fragile child, but the daughters of the poorer classes are as often as not little more than beasts of burden. It is difficult for the colonisers to change this state of things because they have guaranteed to the natives the possession of the civil law, that is to say, the teachings of the Koran. And with Moslems the civil and social laws are one. So for the time being, the Muhammadan woman’s chief hope of anything like social freedom is to be married under the French laws, as is now often happening. In that case she always has recouse, in case she seeks it, to French authority. Influenced by Turkey It is, perhaps, only a question of time when the “emancipation” edicts which, ■under Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, have so ameliorated the condition of Turkish woman, will in one manner and another affect Africa. Already, indeed, they are doing so in Egypt, for the new government expects to make radical changes in the aforesaid civil and social laws. But the Arabs of Algeria and Morocco seem to have little sympathy with modernism in any of its manifestations, especially as it may concern their womenkind. And so you still find women wearing the ancient dress which, as you will discover if you investigate very far, is generally symbolic of a retention of all the ancient customs. This dress envelops the wearer completely in white “haicks” and voluminous muslin draperies. The haick is a long strip of gauze, white in the case of women, generally striped among the men, which covers the head and hangs flat at the back. In the male costume it is fastened at the waist with a foulard of white or coloured silk material and

Fashionable Attire In Arabia

to the white felt cap by a long string of twisted camelhair of light or dark brown colour which is rolled around the cap from 10 to 20 times. Over this he dons a “gandoura” or gown, of white woollen material striped with silk. A woollen “burnous” of as fine texture as the means of the wearer permit, covers this, and maybe one or two more if the climate requires. Difference Only in Materials. This is the outdoor attire and that of the Arab woman is not less voluminous and indeed not materially different. And there is so exact a similarity between the form of dress of all classes that the only mark of difference, either in rank or wealth, is in the texture of the material and its fineness. But at home the dress of a Moslem woman is far more elaborate. The baggy trousers, drawn tight about the ankles for outdoor wear, are in the house replaced by the “serroual,” or wide trousers, of silk or Chinese crepe, reaching only to a little below the knee. Other garments are of the finest gauze, and the feet are in slippers of velvet embroidered with gold. The hair, pleated in long tresses, is knotted behind the head and sometimes descends almost to the ground. The head itself is covered with a dainty little skullcap, or “chechia,” of velvet, thick with gold and seed pearls, or perhaps entirely trimmed witl gold coins. It is attached by golden cords under the chin. Jacket of Brocaded Silk. The upper garment of the well-to-do Moslem woman is the “rlila,” or jacket, of brocaded silk beneath which are one or more vests of gay colours ornamented with many sugarloaf buttons. Round the waist is swathed the “fouta,” or manifold sash of striped silk. Then, when you have added rings and earrings, of emeralds and diamonds and so forth if the means of the wearer permit, necklaces of side rows of pearls strung on ordinary string, bracelets for the arms, or “mesis.” and “redeefs.” or bangles, fo»* the ankles, the Moorish lady is ready for her afternoon “at home.” As the social scale descends, all this is. of course, modified both in quantity and material, and the jewel adornments grow fewer as the economic state becomes more and more humble. But no

woman in the world makes more sacrifices to attire than the Arab and few are so poor as to lack a single bracelet or anklet, and at least a part of the voluminous and elaborate costume that somehow seems to symbolise the confined and restricted life of the Moslem woman.