Scarves continue to remain a long-standing fixture of culture

Karachi: Seeking a competitive edge, fabric designer Vaneeza Ahmad spent hours on the phone to China but couldn't find anyone to make her new line of dupattas, the omnipresent scarves that Pakistani women drape over their arms, head, chest.

China may be the world's factory floor, but its scarf makers aren't equipped for something that can be more than 8 feet long. Ahmad fretted, until, after much wrangling, she found a solution.

"I've located a curtain maker who could do it," she said triumphantly. "They've got the only machines big enough to handle our dupattas."

Essence of femininity, grist for film and literature, political statement, cultural icon, albatross, these few ounces of cotton or silk fabric have woven their way across Pakistan's shoulders, history and fashion runways, morphing from protest symbol to political must-have to sometimes-burdensome accessory demanded by fundamentalists.

Popularity

The South Asian dupatta, which lies somewhere between its religious cousins, the shorter head scarf popular in Turkey and Indonesia and the abaya worn in Saudi Arabia, is such a fixture of Pakistani culture that many women here say they feel naked without one.

And while it may grow longer or shorter, wider or narrower, plain or more extravagant with fashion's whims, it's a long-standing fixture in this conservative Islamic country, with a role in bolstering respect, or modesty and respect. Nearly all Pakistani women wear a dupatta, at least occasionally.

"It has a multitude of uses," said designer Rizwan Beg, who outfitted Princess Diana — she declined to wear a dupatta with his ensemble — on one of her visits to Pakistan.

The dupatta played a cameo role in the 1947 founding of Pakistan, but its first appearance, some claim, dates back 4,000 years to the Indus Valley civilisation, evidenced by sculpture from the period showing high priests apparently wearing dupattas.

As Britain's grip weakened in the '40s, young Muslim women campaigning for the creation of Pakistan used their dupattas to make a statement.

Caught without a green-and-white Muslim League flag, writer Mumtaz Shahnawaz famously whipped off her green dupatta on the roof of the Lahore jail to vent her discontent. A few weeks later, 14-year-old Fatima Sughra used hers to replace the Union Jack atop a Punjab government building.

More than anything, the scarf's bit role in history may reflect its being in the right place at the right time.

The early '60s, a relatively wild period by Pakistani standards, saw the dupatta become shorter and less important. But religious conservatism and nationalism reasserted themselves toward the end of the decade.

In 1966, Pakistan International Airways' new uniforms for flight attendants, designed by Pierre Cardin, replaced pert pillbox hats with what www.historyofpia.com describes as an "imaginatively moulded dupatta that not only covered heads but also turned heads."

The dupatta and its traditional partner, the two-piece tunic and pants ensemble called a shalwar kameez, saw a renaissance under dictator Zia ul-Haq in the mid-1970s. He discouraged Western clothing and launched a campaign to "look Pakistani."

Defiance

Women on state-run television were ordered to cover their heads as part of Zia's religious-nationalist vision. News readers who refused were fired, leading others in defiance to pin the fabric's edge to their hair, a look some likened to the landing of a tiny UFO.

Perhaps one of the most famous women associated with the dupatta was former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Educated overseas, Bhutto embraced the dupatta as a way to downplay her Western lifestyle and boost her voter appeal as a pious Muslim woman.