Unknown Maker, Afghan

At once familiar and alien and distinctive and infamous to a Western audience, the Afghan chaadaree is among the most recognized expressions of Islamic belief. On the one hand extolled as the paramount mode for maintaining a woman’s honor and on the other reviled as a tool for women’s oppression, this ensemble might also be viewed in shades between black and white.

The chaadaree came to Afghanistan via Persia or Mughal India as an upper-class urban prerogative in the 18th century. Over the centuries since, it has been alternately enforced and chosen. Scholarship focusing on the perspective of women wearing the chaadaree shows that many appreciate the privacy, or purdah, that this garment provides as they move about in public (the wearer removes it once she is inside and among women or immediate family members). Many also deliberately circumvent the potential anonymity of a total body covering by focusing on fabric choice (cotton, silk, or synthetic fiber), decoration, and color, each of which can indicate social status, geographic origins, and even religious belief (Muslim vs. Hindu, for example).

This chaadaree was never worn; the donor purchased it in 1977 (before Taliban rule) at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. Describing the street scene there, he states: “Almost all the women, 90 to 95 percent, were heavily veiled and wore costumes like the one you now have. . . . Most of these were beige, brown, or black; but maybe 25 percent were in brighter colors-blue, green, yellow, orange, purple-and many of them, of any color, were pleated. A few of the women, maybe 2 or 3 percent, were in ordinary Western-style clothes, particularly if they were dealing with tourists.” A straightforward outsider’s snapshot, his recollection gives an impression of multiplicity and nuance rather than passivity or repression.