Hidden in plain sight

A Tulsa designer on how fashion isn’t so different half a world away

I was just one of the blondes at Chimera Café on a recent weekend in The Uniform of skinny jeans, boots, and a black leather jacket. Niousha Khosrowyar walked through the door wearing the same, a Prada bag on her arm.

Khosrowyar rarely wears black in her birth country of Iran, where she spends part of her time, in addition to a family home in London and here in Tulsa. “There have been moments when I’m out in public and I’ve suddenly panicked because I didn’t have my head scarf on,” she told me.

Khosrowyar has had a few run-ins with the gashte ershad, more or less the fashion police in Iran, when she quietly but defiantly removed her head scarf in public.

“I wanted to protest the oppression of women. I’ve been taken to jail three times because of it and had to be bailed out by a male family member,” Khosrowyar said. In a society where there is no separation of church and state, standards of modesty are dictated by lawmakers’ interpretation of the Quran. To this day, police patrol the streets in busses, perpetually at the ready to jail avny fashion-code violators.  

“The face is the important thing to put on. Women wear a lot of makeup because it is only the face and hands that are revealed,” Khosrowyar said. “Iranians use fashion as a way to uplift to show their individuality and rebel by their impeccable attention to detail in their dressing. Fashion is their one outlet, so Iran is actually very fashion forward. More so than in the States, even.”

“Every time I go back, I don’t know where to look, the women are all so beautiful,” she said. “People imagine women in Iran wearing black veils, walking around looking like Batman. It isn’t like that. Everyone dresses so beautifully and elegantly.”

For an aspiring fashion designer like Khosrowyar, makeup can allow for only so much creative expression. Due to the sanctions on importation in Iran and the constraints she felt on her clothing options, Niousha found herself recreating her favorite looks and brands from other countries.

“I didn’t want to wear cheap clothes made in China. I was walking by a fabric store and I thought, ‘Why don’t I make my own clothes so I can have exactly what I want?’ I quickly learned that I don’t like to sew, so I commissioned women in the village of Tabriz to do the sewing. They are not allowed by their husbands to work outside of their homes, but the sewing, they can do that at home. So I started recreating and designing clothes,” Khosrowyar said.

If scarcity of fashion options is an issue in Iran, it’s overwhelming abundance that’s the problem in London, where Niousha has spent part of the past decade to attend the fashion school Istituto Marangoni.

“People really make an effort in London. They are very put together with lots of color and patterns. It’s crazy but it still looks very cool. There’s lots of individuality,” she said. 

“Because there is the demand, there is new stuff in the [London] stores every five days. In Tulsa, the same stuff is in the stores for entire seasons, but in London, there is an ever-changing variety. There are so many boutiques, so many options, it drives you nuts. It can be so overwhelming.” Khosrowyar’s style in London is very girly, usually a flowy skirt, tights, heels, and a shear blouse – nothing like what she chose to wear to sit at a bar with me in downtown Tulsa. 

“I give it a lot of thought. Everyone does,” Khosrowyar said.

Disenchanted with the Instituti Marangoni, Niousha has returned to Tulsa to contemplate her next step, to decide between fashion-design school in New York or LA or to take some prerequisites at a local college. In the meantime, she’d like to try her hand at creating and launching a couture collection.

The change has not been without adjustment.
“In Tulsa, the style is so much more relaxed and laid back. People make comments that I’m so dressed up,” Khosrowyar said. “I would wake up so early to spend two hours on my hair and makeup because in both Iran and London, there’s the expectation to look so put together and dressed up. [In Iran,] girls would make fun of me for being so simple.”

Now a world away from the homeland that she left, Khosrowyar “dress[es] down so that I don’t draw attention to myself.,” she said.