Impersonal mannequins display clothes in Afghanistan

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Photos by Wakil KOHSAR

In the Afghan capital, dazzling ball gowns and three-piece wedding suits are on display in shop windows – with each mannequin’s face covered.

According to a clothing retailer in Kabul, morality police have asked stores to hide the faces of mannequins and photos of models.

“It spoils the display a bit,” the 22-year-old said, but “it doesn’t affect sales.”

When the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, they introduced a strict interpretation of Islamic law, including an edict banning the depiction of human faces.

“The environment must be Islamic,” said a vendor in Kabul, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

Evening dresses for women come in bright colors, some have bare shoulders or deep necklines – almost all of them shimmer with sequins.

Dresses are purchased to be worn only in private homes, at gender-segregated weddings, or at engagement parties.

The heads of the mannequins wearing individual dresses are wrapped in plastic, foil or black bags.

“Later they can also order plastic covering for the arms,” the salesman predicted.

Other shops sell traditional Afghan wedding dresses with voluminous skirts and intricate embroidery.

The Taliban government has ordered women to fully cover their bodies in public.

Women running errands in Kabul’s commercial district wore abaya robes and covered their faces with medical masks.

Following the introduction of a ban on depictions of human faces in January 2022, religious police in Herat beheaded mannequins by cutting off their heads.

The rule is now being enforced nationwide by teams from the Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Dressed in long white jackets, they visit shops in Kabul several times a week.

In a multi-story shopping mall in Kabul, mannequin heads are now mostly covered with plastic bags or wrapped in foil.

“In some areas, ‘Vices and Virtues’ come out on certain days, so (shop owners) cover and then uncover the mannequins’ faces,” said Popalzai, a store owner who uses a pseudonym.

“But there are three to six guys here who come two or three times a week. They check from a distance, they are much more lenient than before,” added the shop owner, who experienced the first Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001.

At the entrance to his shop, male mannequins in Western clothes such as jeans or three-piece suits – discouraged by Taliban authorities – all have hoods. One of them wears sunglasses.

Customers and vendors didn’t seem concerned about these strange, headless figures.

“There are bigger problems,” another shop owner said, referring to the difficult economic situation and restrictions on women’s access to education and work.

“It doesn’t really matter to the Afghans,” he said.

“We’re dealing with it.”