Hibr

Harem Pants: Rehashing the Sherwal

A recent western trend embraced by Beirutis is ‘harem pants’, loose-fitting women's garments inspired by a traditional dress the Lebanese know all too well. The west call them ‘harem pants’; we call them sherwals.

Though present in Lebanese folklore for hundreds of years, the sherwal was actually passed on to us by the Turks, though its origins are believed to be Indian. It was the standard attire of the time. In 1909, French designer Paul Poiret, unsuccessfully attempted to popularize traditional Middle Eastern pants worn below long tunics. 60 years later, a photo taken of Dutch actress Talitha Getty on a Marrakesh rooftop in a white sherwal outfit inspires generations of designers to recapture that 1960s Bohemian glamour. By then, it had long been replaced here by more western styles and labeled ‘traditional’. 2000 onward, there were two ‘sherwal scenarios’ in Beirut: a villager wearing the traditional version, or a young lady sporting a flashier pair, both not exactly style icons; the villager is seen as old fashion and the alternative teen a ‘weirdo’. Regardless, underground popularity was spearheaded by shops importing East Asian items, such as colorful handmade sherwals. Around the mid-2000s, some local designers had started producing their own eccentric ‘modern sherwals’. Spring of 2008 and 2009 marked a resurgence of the pants, re-marketed as ‘harem pants’. Although finally achieving mainstream status, there have been mixed feelings in the west. In Beirut however, they have been generally accepted.

Basically, the sherwal was the standard, then replaced and labeled ‘uncool’, but today accepted and sought after as ‘harem pants’. Did we just give up our own heritage only to have it resold to us by the west? Why is it that we need someone else to show us that our own culture is ‘cool’? Can we not appreciate our roots and take pride in them?

"Ever since I opened my shop in 2006, sherwals have been the highest-selling item," remarks Vahan Papazian, proprietor of Ants, a store with handmade Indian garments. Issam Hajali, owner of Fabrizio, a similar shop offering clothing from India and Nepal since 1995, believes that " big companies can be very influential due to their financial power and media presence, but what they lack is the authenticity and detail of handmade products." Both stores import, but what about the homemade variety? Mahmoud Bazzi owns an artisan shop and has been making sherwals for 50 years. "Even after they caught on, no one came to my shop to buy any for fashion purposes," he remarks, adding: "These [harem pants] are not even proper sherwals, but westernized versions of them. People should buy the real thing if they like them."

But what do sherwal-wearers themselves believe? "It's just a nice style and not really doing any harm," says Wafaa Ammaneddine, a shopper at H&M. Unlike Ammaneddine, who wore the typical ‘harem pants’, Rabih Bou Jaber from the village of Abadieh dresses in the traditional black sherwal. "I never see my sherwal as a fashion statement,” says Bou Jaber. “Druze men wear sherwals for religious purposes, but I do not find modern sherwals offensive." He elaborates: "I'm glad to see sherwals getting popular, though I don’t agree with the west providing them for us. When we wear locally-produced, modern sherwals, it's as if we never gave up sherwals to begin with, just altered them to suit our modern age."

The bitter truth is that we buy what (we're told) is ‘in’, regardless of what culture it belongs to. This time, it happened to be a variant of our beloved sherwal. Maybe next time, Japanese kimono or German lederhosen…Perhaps model Janice Dickinson put it best when she said, "Follow sound business trends, not fashion trends."