Why Kabul's prominent dress shops are cloaking heads of mannequins

Under the Taliban, mannequins in women’s dress shops across the Afghan capital Kabul are a haunting sight, their heads cloaked in aluminium foil, cloth sacks or wrapped in black plastic bags.

The hooded mannequins are one symbol of the Taliban’s puritanical rule over Afghanistan.

But in a way, they are also a small show of resistance and creativity by Kabul’s dress merchants.

Initially, the Taliban wanted the mannequins to be outright beheaded.

Not long after they seized power in August 2021, the Taliban Ministry of Vice and Virtue decreed all mannequins must be removed from shop windows or their heads taken off, according to local media.

The Taliban based the order on a strict interpretation of Islamic law that forbids statues and images of the human form since they could be worshipped as idols.

Some clothes sellers complied.

But others pushed back.

They complained they’d be unable to display their clothes properly or would have to damage valuable mannequins.

The Taliban had to amend their order and allowed the shop owners to cover the mannequins’ heads instead.

"When the Vice and Virtue Ministry started their work, they came to my shop a couple of times, and told me to cover the faces of mannequins, even though I told them it is not going to work," said a women's traditional dresses' seller, Muslim Rahimi.

"But we had to cover their (mannequins') faces because we were ordered to do so, and it has impacted our work, because when customers come to our store the first thing they notice is the covered faces of mannequins and they don't buy."

He argued that "business is going down."

Shop owners have to balance between obeying the Taliban and trying to attract customers.

The variety of solutions they came up with are on display on Lycee Maryam Street, a middle-class commercial street lined with dress shops in a northern part of Kabul.

The shop windows and showrooms are lined with mannequins in evening gowns and dresses bursting with colour and decoration - and all in various types of head coverings.

Abdul Samad, who owns a traditional Afghan women's dresses shop, uses the same headscarves to cover the mannequins faces.

He said that shop owners like him have no other choice but to follow the instructions laid down by Taliban.

"We are not idol worshipers, and we don't worship these mannequins, when we were ordered to cover them, we were very sad, but we don't have another choice, other than following the orders," said Samad.

"We are in a situation that what ever the rulers order we have to follow."

Shop owners need to keep things attractive: The economy has collapsed since the Taliban takeover and the ensuing cutoff of international financing, throwing almost the entire population into poverty.

Elaborate dresses have always been popular in Afghanistan for weddings, which even before the Taliban were usually sex segregated, giving women a chance to dress in their finest in Afghanistan’s conservative society.

Under the Taliban, weddings are of the few remaining opportunities for social gatherings.

But with incomes so strained, they have become fewer and less elaborate.

"I know it is silly, but we have no other choice. It impacts our business as well, we can not display dresses and that is why we can't do good business," said women's traditional clothes tailor Zainudin Maroof.

The Taliban initially said they would not impose the same harsh rules over society as they did during their first rule in the late 1990s.

Since then, the Taliban have imposed harsher restrictions, particularly on women.

They have banned women and girls from schooling beyond the sixth grade, barred them from most jobs and demanded they cover their faces when outside.