It's surprising how self-expression can creep into even the most strictly conformist societies. Saudi Arabia is known as one of the strictest. And fashion designer Yahya al-Bishri has been pushing the limits of acceptability in that country for more than a decade. 
A young woman in the UK named Jana Kasabati profiles the likes of Yahya al-Bishri on her blog for fashion-conscious Muslim women. Both are making their mark by pushing for the right to comfort, self-expression and style. Yahya Al-Bishri says Saudi Arabia is his home. That's why he went back there after he finished his fashion studies in the early 1990s, even though he keeps an apartment in Paris.
"To be a designer in Saudi in 1990, it seemed like you wanted to kill yourself. When you see that everyone is against you, it is really not easy."
 Abayas in a shop in Dubai Photo: Lars Plougmann |
"You meet women, you design for women. When they received this information, they tried to send a special woman working for them and then they wanted to send me to jail.
I was facing six or seven years. When I bring boxes of fashion magazines to the airport they destroy them, saying it's like a statue and it's against Islam."
Turning Saudis into gays
Then Mr Al-Bishri decided on redesigning the traditional outfit for Saudi men: the long white robes known as thobes.
"It was 1996 and I was thinking: why we don't change them? Why we keep wearing this polyester thobe: white, plain, dead. I was thinking to create something a little bit different, so people could wear something with a touch of art."
Mr Al-Bishri added coloured stitching, tried using new materials and was accused of trying to turn Saudi men into homosexuals. At first, very few men dared even to express interest in the new thobes. Then, Saudi King Abdullah saw a television interview with Mr Al-Bishri discussing them. It prompted the king to request a meeting with him.
King Abdullah decided he liked the new Thobes, and also asked Mr Al-Bishri to design outfits for the singers in a state-sponsored festival. Suddenly, men all over Saudi wanted to get their hands on Mr Al-Bishri's thobes. And Yahya al-Bishri says he considers the change in mindset that comes with that acceptance a big accomplishment.
Mixing Islam and fashion
For Mr Al-Bishri, fashion and art are ways of connecting the Saudi people to the outside world. Jana Kasabati lives in that ‘outside world', but that doesn't mean her fashion-choices don't come up against scrutiny. A year ago, she started a blog named Hijab Style about fashion for Muslim women in the UK. She says she started it because she felt the media was talking for Muslim women, instead of to them.
"You'd come across loads and loads of articles about ‘these poor Muslim women they wear black head to toe, they're forced to by their parents, blah blah blah' and that really annoyed me. So I thought this would be a way for Muslim women to take control of the situation and express the hijab on their own terms."
Ms Kasabati says the responses to her blog have been mostly favourable, but some readers have told her she shouldn't be mixing Islam and fashion.
 Fashion illustration by Anik Pujiati
Photo: Hijab Style
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Crackdown on trendy abayas
But whatever disapproval she may face from other Muslims, people on the street or the readers of her blog, Ms Kasabati, in London, is still free to choose what to wear and what clothes to profile as recommendations for other Muslim women. And freedom to choose is what her blog is all about.
And in Saudi Arabia? Well, lately the religious police have been cracking down on the trendy versions of women's long, black robes. Shopkeepers who sell abayas that are fitted, or adorned with jewels and embroidery, find themselves at risk of imprisonment. But men's clothing has undergone an official metamorphosis. Silk, cotton and colour are all common in the thobe, and Yahya al-Bishri's got competition from a new generation of Saudi designers.
Tags: abaya, fashion, Jana Kasabati, King Abdullah , Muslim, Saudi Arabia, thobe, Yahya Al-Bishri