Afghanistan has played host to its first fashion show in decades, with models displaying designer garments at a hotel in the capital, Kabul.
Minstrels in Heart, 1973
The show, which made the news on Afghanistan's Tolo TV channel, attracted an audience of expatriates and well-to-do Afghans. Clothes made from Afghan textiles, including fashion burqas, were shown off by non-Afghan models to the accompaniment of traditional local music.
Organisers said they did not want to court controversy by using models from the conservative Muslim country. The Taleban, who ruled the country in the 1990s before being ousted in 2001, enforced laws requiring women to cover themselves from head to toe. Nearly five years after the Taleban's fall, many Afghan women still choose to cover up completely when in public.
Balancing act
One of the designers behind the show, Italian Isabella Ghidoni, told Reuters: "We invited a lot of Afghan women to attend the show but not to be models." The garments on display were body-skimming rather than skimpy, and covered the models' chests, legs and arms.
Nooria Farhad, one of those in the audience, harboured her own hopes for the future.
"It will be much better and more effective if, in future, our Afghan models do fashion shows and show the world Afghan clothes," she said. "But we know many families still do not allow their daughters to do things like this."
Fashion sense
Ms Ghidoni and her partner, Afghan designer Zolaykha Sherzad, started off by training women in fashion and jewellery design and went on to sell their creations in Kabul shops.
Ms Sherzad said small fashion shows were held in the city before war broke out in the late 1970s. "There's not much in terms of the fashion we see in the West but there is fashion within a private environment, within the houses," she said. "People like to be fashionable."
Afghan ragas, in contrast to Indian ones, tend to be more focused on rhythm, and are usually played with the tabla, or the local zerbaghali, dayra or dohol, all Other Afghan classical instruments include the dutar sorna sitar, dilruba, tambur, ghichak, and Rubab.
The most famous Afghan Classical singer is Ustad Sarahang, who is one of the Master singers in North Indian Classical Music and is also well-known in all over India and Pakistan. Other classical singers are Ustad Qstad, Ustad Rahim Baksh, and Ustad Nato.
Minstrels in Heart, 1973