I spent a season meeting Tehran's clothing designers. The first thing I learned: the overcoat is where all the invention is.
I went looking for the people designing clothes in Tehran, and I kept ending up in the same place — the manteau, the long overcoat every woman wears out of the house. I had thought of it as a constraint. The designers I met think of it as a canvas.
At Anar — 'pomegranate' — Anousheh Assefi has been remaking the manteau since 2006, in colours and cuts that turn a daily necessity into something you choose with pleasure. You see the whole philosophy in a single coat: work within the rule, and make the rule disappear.
“Give a designer one garment and a rule, and watch what they do with it.”
Elsewhere the language is heritage. Naghmeh Kiumarsi sews calligraphy and old textiles into modern pieces; Nima Behnoud puts Persian letters on streetwear that travels far past Tehran. The poem becomes a seam, the verse becomes a print.
What I came away with is simple, and it shaped our own line: constraint is not the enemy of design. Give a real designer a single garment and a rule, and they will hand you back something freer than anyone working with no limits at all.
