Why Abayas Are Black- and all the colours of Qu'ranic Saudi Arabia

One expat from Saudi Arabia posted this: "While sitting at Starbucks at the local mall the other day, an Arab woman walked in and literally made me do a double-take. Instead of wearing the traditional black abaya – yards and yards of black fabric meant to conceal and cover every curve and prevent anyone from noticing the wearer – this woman was wearing an eye-popping candy apple red abaya: Double breasted, empress waist, beautifully flowing skirting that skimmed the ground with – of course – a matching red silk hijab.

It was, in a word, stunning. I’ve written before about my first abaya and my amazement that abayas came in different styles and cuts. I thought I was making quite a fashion statement with my discreet orange embroidered leaves down one arm and around the hem of my scarf – albeit a black body-hiding fashion statement! But my little ornamentation was nothing compared to the jaw-dropping simplicity and beauty of this woman’s abaya which – btw – she’d designed herself.“Why should I look ugly?” she asked in response to my question of where she’d gotten the beautiful outfit. “They tell me I need to cover myself and I’m covered. No one said I needed to look like an old crow.”As I’ve said it a gzillion times, I’m no religious expert – and I invite those of you who know more than I do to set me straight when I’m wrong – but I seriously doubt that the cut and design – much less the color – of a woman’s covering was prescribed by any religious authority. More likely, black was a color that early women were able to easily create from the resources they had – goats mainly – and so black it was. (It makes sense, considering that most hand woven desert tents today are still black – but again I may be wrong!) And as far as design, simple is always better, and what could be more simple – or concealing –than a loose-fitting, one-piece robe? Black makes (at least a modicum of) sense if you assume that the sole purpose was to conceal a woman’s curves with whatever was at hand.

But, what about now – when every color of the rainbow is available? Why are a huge majority of abayas still black? Or more precisely, why don’t more women take advantage of the many great tailors in the area and create abayas that are both function – covering and concealing a woman’s curves – and fashionable in any color other than black? I’m not advocating candy apple red abayas. I’m not advocating anything at all. I’m just wondering why I never see dusty blue or rich chocolate or burgundy wine-colored abayas. More succinctly, I guess, I'm wondering why "conceal and cover" needs to translate into a loose black sheet (with or without ornamentation) when it could just as easily be transformed into a beautiful article of loose-fitting, body-hiding, non-attention grabbing any-color-but-black fashion?"

Well, abayas do, today, come in a vast array of colours, and as Carol (that is her name) guessed, the only dark coloured dye readily (and cheaply) available to the first followers of Mohammed S.A.W was black dye made from from goat's milk. Evidenced by a man who gave a friend of mine a lesson in how to make modest dye 'Bedu' style. Jazzaks Pix for the pics. And the post: D But why the dark colour?

Pixie (of Beautiful Muslimah): In the Middle East, the reason why women wear black and men wear white is because, in history, battles were fought at night. I don’t know if you know this, but, the desert is hot. It makes sense that extreme physical exertion would be left for the hours when the sun went down-but many do not know this. The colour (the cut is for modesty) has nothing to do with suppression, or women being less than men, or hiding the shapes of our bodies-not originally, though most Muslims I know have sadly lost the historical significance of their own dress, and quote a hadith about the first Muslim followers of Mohammed (SAW) looking like crows to explain their abaya (that black robe you still see so many Muslim woman running around in). In fact there were always various forms of dress in Mecca, and some species of crows in the Gulf have white heads, not black. No, it came about by way of honour. It was considered dishonourable to kill women and children, so men stood out in white- and could fight each other randomly as men throughout history are wont to- and dark coloured robes protected women. Any dark dye would have done (and there are various ahadith collected that document women of the early sahaba using dyes that would have produced saffron yellow, reddish brown, and green, but the most inexpensive dye would have been black [which can be made from goat's milk]. For more information about historical Saudi dress see http://www.mansoojat.org/index.html. Saudi Arabian historical dress samples pictured below.

Now many today see black as making Muslim women stand out in the negative wake of terrorism... so why do we Muslim women not switch to bright florals?

Some of us have: I personally (and many sisters of my aquaintance) have a wide and varied closet but I still fall back to my black.

Why? It doesn't get dirty as much as white would so I'm glad I'm not a Gulf man, it matches virtually everything so it makes a good wardrobe piece (from dress to suit), and it has that traditional safety attached to it in memory.