Strange and Sexy Syrian Lingerie
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Bridal Bouquets
In Syria, an essential part of Muslim wedding trousseaus is sexy lingerie. Brides-to-be, with their mothers and female relatives, shop for up to 30 bra-and-thong outfits for their wedding night. Styles range from prim virginal floral arrangements crowning a thong like a wedding corsage to nippleless leotards. Some of the bra-and-panty sets sing and light up. Others can be eaten. Although the lingerie is widely available and accepted as a part of a healthy marriage between a religious man and woman, it is rarely discussed in public.
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The Models
The lingerie styles are displayed in hand-assembled photo albums to bypass censorship laws by avoiding a visit to a printing house (which would require official government authorization). The Eastern European models sport badly shaven bikini lines and outgrown dye jobs. Because the photographs do not titillate, local photographers like Omar al-Moutem, who calls himself a devout Muslim, feel able to work in the industry without compromising religious proscriptions against sexual immodesty.
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Open Borders
The tradition of collecting sexy lingerie began after the 1973 Yom Kippur war when the Gulf states invested in Syria as a frontline against Israel, and the materials and machines needed to manufacture a garment as technologically complex as the bra made their way through the country's once-closed borders. Before this, Syria was a Soviet satellite. It sold ill-fitting and poorly made cotton underwear to Russia.
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Hands Off
Zina Azem, a Syrian lingerie designer based in the U.K., arranged to meet a local supplier on a trip to Syria. They were greeted by a veiled woman who offered them dates and told them to look around the showroom. "It was filled with the dodgiest things I had ever seen-chains, hardcore leather S&M, and stuff like that. As time passed, I kept thinking, ‘Am I in the wrong place?' Finally a very pleasant man arrived. He had rubber you could stretch that changed color according to body temperature."
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The Softer Side of Sadomasochism
Music producer Lena Lahham, who works and lives between Damascus and Beirut, did her own informal research in the lingerie stores in Souk al-Hamidiyeh. She told Malu Halasa and Rana Salam: "The lingerie is almost done in a naïve, sweet, innocent way. It is not sick or perverted. Even the sadomasochistic ones are soft; they don't have a dark, pornographic side to them. It's something to have fun with, to enjoy."
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"Dring, Dring!"
Lahham says her friend asked a cleaning lady at her office "what she thought of the lingerie. The woman said, ‘I love it. I have the one with the mobile phone. I put that one on'—and this woman is veiled—‘when I want to have sex.' Then she sits on the bed, naked except for the mobile phone thong, calling to her husband, ‘Dring, dring, dring, dring, are you going to answer the phone?' These creations make it easier for a couple to talk about sex, a topic that is a huge taboo in the Middle East. Suddenly it's not so heavy and serious."
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The Curtain
Constructed on metal frames, "the Curtain" was created by Mouhammed Doukmak, who owns Amasel Fashion, Syria's most design-savvy lingerie company. Doukmak got his start sewing dresses for his mother and sisters, so is sensitive to the motivations of women who buy his products. He says that "a woman constantly has to keep changing herself in order to entertain her husband." Good sexual relations are considered a "wifely duty," and the industry enforces this idea.
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Better Than Drugs
One woman told Eugenie Dolberg, a photographer who worked in Syria, about the experience of a friend who sought out drugs to help her husband, who was having problems in the bedroom. The pharmacist told her to buy lingerie instead. Giving him drugs might challenge his masculinity, he said. "My friend was a little shocked but followed the pharmacist's advice. She bought some amazing pink underwear shaped like a rabbit. You pulled the rabbit's ears and it lit up, popped open, and sang a song."
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The Men Behind The Edible Bikinis
At Lingerie Chantel, a company run by Khalil Murad and his two sons (pictured), sex candy sells. They manufacture chocolate, mango, strawberry, and tutti-frutti edible bikini sets. In religious cultures, strict segregation of the sexes prevents men and women from meeting alone, or developing a shared language of subtle cues. This carries over into marriage, where more direct signals apply. A G-string in a heart-shaped chocolate or glacé fruit makes intentions crystal clear.
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Tweety
To us, a thong featuring Tweety Bird might not seem sexy, but men like Firas Nabulsi know their market well. Nabulsi was a lingerie salesman before he started designing for his own firm, Angel Lady. Because his customers rarely see a naked woman, anything she wears is exciting. In his experience, men buy the more experimental lingerie styles for their mistresses and conservative loungewear for their wives.
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The lingerie has its practical uses for his female customers as well: It keeps husbands away from prostitution, a recurring theme in Syria. With the war in neighboring Iraq, Damascus has become a sex capital, so much so that Iranian delegates securing a special relationship with the country's current president, Bashar Assad (whose brother Basil is pictured) complained about the city's fleshpot nightclubs and scantily-clad women performers during Ramadan television spectaculars.
