Afghanistan: a burqa for Barbie

The burqa has been ‘on trend’ here for hundreds of years. Like the local equivalent of a Hermès scarf or a Louboutin red heel, it first became popular as a status symbol, with the impractical billowing folds of the upturned shuttlecock clearly signalling that the wearer was a wealthier Metropolitan woman who’d never be seen dead working in the fields like her poorer Afghan sisters.