c. 2006 Religion News Service

TEHRAN, Iran _ On a crowded street recently, women muscled into a boutique that boasted signs of sales: up to 75 percent off.

From behind the glass door, a gray-haired man shouted at the customers who pushed forward as if they were rushing a concert stage.

The store, Kasa, was too full.

“Wait until it empties,” he pleaded. “Sabre bede ta khaly beshe.”

Kasa, a three-story clothing store in the capital city, was having an end-of-season sale. Women pillaged racks of vibrantly colored garb, trying on piles of the outerwear required by the country’s Islamic regulations _ the manteau and roosary.

A manteau is a coat; the roosary is a headscarf. The garments help women cover their hair and skin in public year-round, from the time their bodies begin to develop. And while it has been widely reported that women’s dress regulations have toughened since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was appointed Iran’s president last year and vowed to restore Islamic traditions, visitors to two cities recently found the opposite.

In fact, most women in Tehran, a city of about 12 million, seem to favor brightly colored headscarves. And several said they care more about style than American women do.

“It’s a cage the government has built for us to fit into,” said Esmat Shajaee, 33, who was shopping for a navy manteau. “They want us to stay quiet and fit the mold they’ve created for us. It’s not something I accept nor am comfortable with, but there’s little we can do.”

In theory, the country’s Islamic law requires women to wear the manteau over pants or long skirts and the roosary over their hair when they leave the house. Tradition also holds that nowhere in public may women _ including Western tourists _ remove the articles or otherwise dress as they please. Depending on the extent of the violation, lawbreakers can be verbally chastised or jailed by green-suited enforcement police who patrol the streets.

Men have it much easier. They aren’t allowed to wear shorts or sleeveless shirts under Islamic law. Otherwise they’re free.

Mohammad Shafiee, an Islamic cleric in Shiraz, a city of about 1.2 million some 400 miles south of the capital, said the enforcement police were stricter after the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah.

“Regulations on dress have become more relaxed because Iran’s been under world scrutiny since the overthrow,” Shafiee said. “The United Nations has pushed for human rights and the Iranian women themselves don’t want to cover up.

“These add up and have forced the government to be more open with women’s dress.”

Traditional dress _ in black from head to toe _ has not disappeared, but residents said it is being challenged aggressively in a modern city like Tehran, where one in six Iranians lives.

Not only are they wearing brightly colored jackets and scarves _ think Jackie Onassis _ but women here are shedding their chadors, which look like sheets draped over their heads, in favor of more Western-style clothing. It is not unusual to see women in jeans and sneakers or open-toed sandals. Even many who wear traditional dress are letting their bangs and ponytails show and wearing flashy manteaus tight and short enough to reveal the shape of their bodies. And because the temperature regularly surpasses 100 degrees in the summer, many said they wear skimpy tops or only bras underneath.

Recently in one of Tehran’s largest and oldest parks, Mellat Park, a policeman told 20-year-old Yalda Manouchehry she should pull her orange paisley headscarf forward to cover more of her hair, Manouchehry later recalled.

“He can say what he wants,” she said. “I’m not afraid of him because all he’ll do is shout at me. I can walk away.”

Back at Kasa, Yalda Adabi, 23, revealed a tiny glimmering jewel on one of her teeth and explained Iranian women are “just like everyone else in the world who want to change clothes regularly and show off our looks.”

The jewel on her tooth is the season’s must-have accessory for fashionistas here. It costs about $35.

Amir Noori has been selling clothes in Tehran for 36 years, including the last 12 at Kasa. Today, he said, his customer base is so extensive that he invites about 25,000 women to each season’s sale.

He has a small factory outside Tehran and one in the basement of his boutique, where 60 percent of his clothing is made. The other 40 percent, Noori said, comes from Turkey and Italy. The styles copy the trends in Los Angeles, where there’s an extensive Iranian population, or in Europe, as seen in magazines or on satellite television.

Summer manteaus cost from $40 to $200. Noori said customers readily pay for the quality and style of his products despite double-digit inflation and soaring unemployment that are crippling some corners of the economy.

In the modern and wealthier northern section of Tehran, Noori’s clientele also can buy Versace and Guess at Tandis Center, one of the fanciest shopping malls in the city. Miss Sixty, an expensive Italian women’s boutique, will open in just a few months.

Noori admits a wave of political tension occasionally will cause policemen to try to tighten their influence on clothing, asking store owners to sell larger headscarves and longer coats for cover-up.

“But the government can only control so much,” Noori said. “If women want to wear tight clothes, they’ll buy smaller sizes. I can’t stop them. It’s the women’s taste that will ultimately determine what they wear.”

(Nawal Qarooni writes for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

KRE/PH END QAROONI

Editors: To obtain photos of Negin Javaherian, women window shopping and women in bright scarves, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

Also see related stories, RNS-IRAN-BEAUTY and RNS-IRAN-FAMILY, both transmitted Sept. 25, 2006.