Eighth Fadjr International Fashion and Clothing Festival opens in Tehran
The Eighth Fadjr International Fashion and Clothing Festival (February 15-21) opened in a ceremony in Tehran on Friday. The ceremony was attended by Vice President for Family and Women’s Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar and the former assistant of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on citizenship rights, Shahindokht Molaverdi.
Iranian producers, designers and brands are showcasing their latest products and achievements in fashion and clothing at this festival.
In an address to the opening ceremony, Ebtekar said Iran is among the countries whose capacities, potentials and capitals in certain fields have still remained untapped.
She added, “All these create a great and momentous situation for us.”
Appreciating efforts by domestic designers, producers and traders in the fields of fashion and clothing as well as all Iranian cultural officials who have sought to use the country’s entire capacities and assets, she said in the fourth decade following the victory of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution “we see that we have made significant progress in the areas of education and art”.
Given its great cultural diversity and a large number of different ethnic groups, Iran has a high capacity to, thanks to its historical background and globally top-ranked handicrafts, make a significant progress in the field of clothing, Ebtekar noted.
She described as lucrative and very good, respectively, the economic dimension of the industry and the number of job opportunities it has created, urging that Iran should be a pioneer in this field.
Speaking at the same ceremony, Hamid Qobadi, the secretary of the Iranian Working Group for Organizing Fashion and Clothing, said among the most important policies of the working group, adopted through solidarity and unity, is that “we have attempted to move toward employing a style- and taste-oriented approach from implementing a product-oriented one, which is an outcome of years of efforts”.
Previously, he said, Iranian people had to use one-dimensional products, whereas in the past few years, Iran’s fashion and clothing industry has adapted itself in a way to cater to their tastes.
“We have attempted to, instead of telling people what to wear, increase their choice. This is perhaps our working group’s most important policy.”
Addressing the same ceremony, Sadiqeh Pakbin, the festival’s executive secretary, said the event seeks to be a window for showcasing a major cultural category and industry that has a very high turnover in domestic market. She added the festival aims to do its best to hand over the helm of this market to domestic producers.
“We are required to provide our producers with the opportunity to exploit these potentials to be able to witness an incremental progress in this cultural field.”
She said Iran had previously handed over domestic clothing market to foreign producers, whereas “we can capture it by paying greater attention” to this industry.
Iranian producers and designers shoulder a very important responsibility to this end, Pakbin said, adding they have to combine science with the country’s valuable cultural elements to be able to inject Islamic-iranian culture into the domestic market.