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Chitral Chicks - 2004

Chitral Chicks - Pakistan

The Astonishing Pakistani Fashion Shows Bringing Women Rights


December 2004
For downloads and more information visit:
http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=17998

The women of Chitral in the Hindu Kush in Pakistan are traditionally kept out of sight and out of power. But the arrival of a foreign fashion line is changing everything.

The clothing line, Carvana, is empowering dozens of local women giving them a market for their traditional sewing skills. Many now earn more than their husbands. And it's not only women benefiting from the work -- there's even a former Taliban member working for Carvana.

Produced by ABC Australia. Ref - 2533 Distributed by Journeyman Pictures

Journeyman Pictures is your independent source for the world's most powerful films, exploring the burning issues of today. We represent stories from the world's top producers, with brand new content coming in all the time. On our channel you'll find outstanding and controversial journalism covering any global subject you can imagine wanting to know about.





Transcript



Music

Thompson: It’s Fashion Week in Sydney and young Australian designers are showing off their wares.

Most have gone for a retro theme, recycling Western clothing-styles from the 1980s.

But one design duo has taken inspiration from a land and culture that’s right off the fashion map.

Kirsten: Cath you’ve got Julia coming out in the yellow fisherman’s pants and the society top, not Sarah.

Music

Kirsten: My phone’s just broken.

Thompson: Cathy Braid and Kirsten Ainsworth are unveiling their new label, Caravana.

Kirsten: We’re just starting out. We don’t have massive dreams of conquering the world all in one day.

Thompson: Inspired by Central Asia, the clothes are painstakingly handmade by women half the world away.

Music

Thompson: Just getting this far has been a remarkable journey.

While the clothes celebrate the female form, they’ve come from a place where women have to hide their bodies.

Thompson: Locked in by winter for five months of the year, Chitral is among the world’s most remote mountain valleys, but still boasts a population of 350,000 people. Most are Sunni Muslims although there are other beliefs in the valley too. But wherever you go in Chitral town, men is all that you see on the street.

Except for Cathy and Kirsten that is.

Thompson: When they’re not competing on the catwalk, they live and work in Chitral. This remote corner of North-West Pakistan, high in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, is not an obvious place for a women’s clothing line.

The sexes are strictly segregated. Women have to be veiled. And it’s only the spectacle of masculine power which is celebrated at Chitral’s annual sports day.

Cath: To start your own fashion label, particularly with what we wanted to do, it was just impossible.

Kirsten: We were at a crossroads, both of us
and we’d been meeting for about a year in coffee shops about ideas and we saved up some money and got on a plane.

Thompson: Cathy and Kirsten have been based here for more than a year. They spend most days in a quieter place away from men -- the closed, private world of Chitral’s women. Hidden behind this stretch of cornfields is Caravana’s main embroidery centre.

About 100 women use their handicraft skills to produce the catwalk creations. They’re from Chitral’s Sunni Muslim majority and they’re bound by strict rules of purdah. They may make revealing clothes, but couldn’t imagine even trying them on.

Razia: These things are strange and I think just like – they are thinking they cannot wear these type of things in Chitral

Thompson: Do they want to wear these things?

Razia: I don’t think so, no, no, no.

Thompson: Razia Suhrab works for a local organisation supporting Caravana’s efforts.

These women never had a market for their traditional skills -- until Cathy and Kirsten arrived.

Razia: Some of these ladies are also, they are earning more money than their husbands, their fathers and brothers, so now they have a value in their family.

Thompson: It will take Usmania Gullam one month to embroider the skirt in her hands and turn it into a centrepiece of Caravana’s upcoming winter collection.
Usmania will be paid about 100 dollars.

But that money makes a vast difference to Usmania’s family. They were left destitute when her husband died six years ago.

Usmania: We are thirteen people living in this house and we don’t have a fixed income. The money that I bring from the centre I share with my brothers, my mother in law and children.

I have a brother who is disabled and I have mother and father who are ill. He used to bring the money, but now the responsibility is on me.

Kirsten: There’s nothing more satisfying than putting money into the hands of these women who have never earned anything of their own blood, sweat and tears in their life.

The smiles on their faces say everything.

Thompson: Caravana’s network of Muslim craftswomen stretches across the Chitral valley to the more moderate Ismaili community.

Cathy: there’s a few subtle differences. They still consider themselves Muslims, but they pray three times a day instead of five times a day.

They don’t practice purdah but if an Ismaili woman goes into Chitral town, she’ll still have to cover like this.

Kirsten: It looks very granny, – granny’s been working for three months

Thompson: But translating their skills to Western catwalks is always a challenge.

Kirsten: This one is beautiful

Woman: You look and check… wait… wait.

Kirsten: This one will become straight. This one is straight… and this is straight..Look at this one. What have you done? Three boobs!

Music

Thompson: Playing polo is a local obsession.

Women in search of recreation can watch it too -- as long as they keep out of sight.

Music

Cath: How are you, friend?

Kirsten: Good, my friend

Cath: Who’s winning?

Kirsten: Chitral A team’s winning – three goals.

Cath: And who scored those?

Kirsten: I don’t know – I can’t see – the tree’s in the way.

Music

Thompson: Before coming to Chitral, Cathy and Kirsten were not close friends.

They met briefly at high school, before catching up years later and discovering they both shared a dream of working and living overseas.

And despite their deep connections to this community, they are still outsiders.

Kirsten: You’ve got an eyelash on your face, wish on it.

Cath: Where is it?

Kirsten: We are married to each other, you know, we are living in this island of isolation in this country, and there are no other foreigners here where we are, and no-one who speaks fluent English and mostly men. The women don’t trust us – you know, they’re nervous around us because, foreigners have preceded us here, English girls who were all wild and free and ran off with men and things like that, and we really have to play by the rules, because if we do something wrong, we can be thrown out in the blink of an eye, and we won’t even know what’s happened.

We’ve just got each other behind these four big walls and we’re husband and wife, brother sister, father daughter, mother daughter you know, kind of best friend, kind of everything to each other and that’s wonderful and it’s difficult as well.

I never really got into cooking before, but I’ve gotten into cooking here. It’s good, even though we have nothing.

Thompson: While Kirsten cooks up the evening meal, Cath picks up some bread from the local baker.

Cath: How are you? Good, yeah? Five pieces of bread

Man: Fresh?

Cath: Very hot, very hot.

Thompson: As the only young western women in the community, Cathy and Kirsten have different ideas about how to handle all the attention they attract.

Kirsten: Cath has the view that we’re émigrés and I don’t give a damn, I’ll do whatever I want and I don’t like it – it’s difficult. I don’t like people looking at me.
You know I prefer not to be looked at, so I avoid being looked at.

We still get men calling us late at night and asking us to come and sit with them under chinar trees and drink cherry wine and these things but, they do know that we don’t do those things and they respect that now.

Thompson: It’s really tasty.

Kirsten: We try not to use so much oil. You have to taste the eggplant. The eggplant’s amazing.

And we have peaches and we have pomegranates and we have walnuts and we have tamarinds, and pears.

Geoff: A life of luxury!

Kirsten: And when we have no money, we just climb a tree. We do literally, don’t we Cath?

Thompson: With the deadline for the next show just weeks away the issues of money and time are now uppermost in their minds.

This morning they are making an urgent delivery of wool to the Kalash people – another distinct valley community with very particular skills.

Song on radio: My eyes are going black, waiting for you. You are telling me to live a happy life but how can I be happy without you? How can I be happy without you?

Kirsten: Where is your mother?

Child: The foreigners are here… and they will give us money.
Thompson: The Kalash are not Muslims at all, but adhere to animist beliefs and colourful cultural traditions they say they can trace back to Alexander the Great.

Kirsten: You can see this lady’s belt here it’s hand-woven and this is the same weaving that we’re using for the belts and it’s not done anywhere else. And the nice thing about it is that we’ve incorporated it into our collection so that we can bring work to these women and it’s different – you don’t see it anywhere else and they just do it in their homes.

We’ve made slight modifications to the belt – this one’s about 8 foot long and they wrap it round and round and round and round and round, so we’ve made it a little bit thinner and not as long and used no fluoro colours.

Thompson: Many families in the Chitral valley now depend on Caravana and there are fears of what will happen if they leave.

Razia: There is a lot of expectations from these two ladies because, you know, Cathy and Kirsten they have finished their work. They have finished their pay to these ladies, so
now they have expectations, now they are asking when they will leave the project, what happen.

Thompson: Not only women, but men too are depending on Cathy and Kirsten.

These young men are paid to weave belts made from leather recycled from winter coats once worn by Europeans. The leather was sent to Pakistan to reinforce shoes.

Kirsten: The beautiful thing about them is that they are just so soft because it is second hand leather. We’ve had great orders from these belts and these guys here are fantastic. They’ve been with us for about eight months now.

And we have this leather man in Kissahni Bazaar in Peshawar who we go to and he’s really reliable. And we buy around 400 kilos of leather every time. I think he thinks all his Christmases have come at once. Now he’s been able to buy a brand new weighing machine, which is fantastic and he’s hoping to send his son overseas to go to school.

Thompson: This new beadwork shop was opened with money earned from Caravana orders.

It’s run by Rehmat Walli – a former member of the Taliban who returned to Chitral after the fundamentalist regime was toppled in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Rehmat: We use 32 needles, sixteen on one side and sixteen on the other.

Thompson: Rehmat Walli welcomes the work but says he has no feelings about working for women, even though women were banned from working at all under the Taliban.

Rehmat: I don’t feel anything because I don’t sit with them. They bring the work and then they go away.

Thompson: And suddenly, that’s what Kirsten has to do.
With time running out, new materials are needed from the nearest city -- Peshawar -- a forty minute flight to the south.

Music

Thompson: Left alone, Cath is able to focus on what she knows best -- design.

Inspired by Central Asian motifs, Cath hand draws every skirt Caravana produces.

Cath: The design varies slightly each time, so the general idea is taken, but because it’s hand drawn it can’t be perfect – it won’t be the same every time. So there might be an extra flower here, or an extra flower there, extra leaf here or there or a squiggle or whatever. And once that’s drawn its taken down to the embroidery centre.

Because the pieces are so time consuming, we might have three ladies working on a particular piece, so you’ll get, you’ll see the differences between the work in one skirt as three different ladies have worked on it, which is really nice because it gives that handmade feel.

Thompson: Cath spent last winter isolated and working in Chitral and plans to do it again this year.

It’s a tough existence in a fickle industry, but she is committed to Chitral and its people.

Cath: It’s not even a question of worrying if we go –
it’s a question of you know, what if no-one likes what we do, you know, what if the orders aren’t what we hope them to be and we sort of come back with not enough work to do for the ladies for four months – so it’s trying to hit the mark every time.

Thompson: In Peshawar Kirsten is hitting the shops in search of the supplies Cath needs to complete the collection for Melbourne Fashion Week.

Kirsten : And I’m down here working to try and make the money so that we can make the show. One thing is my responsibility, another thing is Cath’s responsibility and we just go from there. Inshallah, everything will be okay.
Kirsten on phone: The lawn is available so I’ll get the lawn now, I’ll get the anchor thread, Ochad’s coming at six. My friend came one week back. You are Murad? Hello are you? So I need gul ahmed with the plain black cotton.

Murad: Yeah… it should be available. She told me that she will come after two weeks.

Kirsten: Okay, well I am here now. She needs it.

Murad: I can manage it. You can come 2-3 days later.

Kirsten: This one, I need now. Can you bring from another shop?

Murad: No this is not available.

Kirsten: Can you check?

Murad: Every shop has a different standard.

Kirsten: My problem is tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning 7 o’clock, I must put it on a plane to Chitral.

Kirsten: Yeah, everything is a mad cram. It’s manic. Last time, it was manic. This time, it will be manic. I think it is the nature of the beast. We seem to work best under pressure. So as the time is running out everything happens.

Music

Thompson: A month later and it’s finally all finished. Cath is Melbourne, with Kirsten’s mother Caroline helping her as they run late for their show.

Cath: It’s just got the socks and the socks go halfway up the calves.

Thompson: Some last minute adjustments need to be juggled with an anxious Kirsten on the phone from Pakistan.

Caroline: That was Kirst – she’s desperate to know how everything’s going and it’s really hard because she was so involved with Cath last time and there she is desperate to communicate. She just wants to be here --– missing it all, missing it all

Cath: That’s ok, I just don’t want to see any flesh.

Music

Thompson: Months of grinding commitment in Pakistan are reduced to just a few dazzling minutes on a catwalk in Melbourne.

Cath: Just walking around in a big city where everybody’s just go, go, go completely different pace of life to what I’m used to – and yeah, so, it’s kind of like, I’m still very outside of it and just looking in really.

Thompson: But you’re glad it’s over?

Cath: Yeah, glad it’s over. (laughs)

Music

Reporter: Geoff Thompson
Camera: Michael Cox
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Research: Anna Bracks






© 2013 Journeyman Pictures
Journeyman Pictures Ltd. 4-6 High Street, Thames Ditton, Surrey, KT7 0RY, United Kingdom
Email: info@journeyman.tv

Chitral Chicks - 2004 Reviewed by Uncle Sam on 01:54 Rating: 5

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