A Brief History of Fashion in Iran
Suggested slug: /history-of-iranian-fashion/ Meta title: A Brief History of Fashion in Iran, From Persia to Today Meta description: The history of Iranian fashion, from Achaemenid court dress through the Safavid golden age to the designers reviving it today.
Suggested WordPress category: Iranian Fashion (this cluster supports the Iranian Fashion pillar directly and covers the broad historical arc, not a single region, textile, or motif, so it sits in the general Iranian Fashion category alongside the pillar and “What Is Iranian Fashion?” rather than under Heritage & Motifs.)
Introduction
The history of Iranian fashion goes back further than almost any other clothing tradition still in active use today, and it hasn’t moved in a straight line. It runs from Achaemenid court dress recorded in stone reliefs, through a Safavid golden age that turned clothing into a form of political messaging, into a twentieth century that reversed its own dress laws twice, and finally into a design scene now reviving faster than at any point in the last forty years. This guide walks through that whole arc, era by era, so you can see exactly how Iran got from ancient courtly robes to a Naghmeh Kiumarsi collection on a runway in Milan.
Ancient Persia: Where the Record Begins
Evidence for what people in Iran wore stretches back to the Achaemenid Empire (550 to 330 BCE). Reliefs, glazed bricks, seals, and coins from this period record courtly garments and headwear in enough detail that historians treat Achaemenid dress as one of the earliest well-documented costume traditions anywhere in the world. Clothing already carried real social weight at this point. Fabric, color, and cut signaled rank, and that basic idea, that dress communicates status and identity rather than just covering the body, has stayed constant through every era of Iranian fashion since.
Very little actual fabric survives from this far back, for the simple reason that textiles decay far faster than stone or metal. Almost everything historians know about Achaemenid dress comes from what was carved, cast, or painted rather than what was sewn, which is part of why later, better-preserved periods like the Safavid era get so much more attention in fashion history specifically.
The Safavid Golden Age (1501 to 1722)
If there’s one period historians and museums return to again and again when discussing Persian dress, it’s the Safavid era. As the Metropolitan Museum of Art explains, Safavid fashion carried real political and literary weight and worked as a genuine medium for self-expression, marked by bold color combinations, figural motifs woven directly into fabric, and heavy use of gold and silver-wrapped thread.
Political allegiance showed up literally on people’s heads. Shah Isma’il, the dynasty’s founder, and his supporters wore a distinctive red felt cap wrapped with a twelve-folded white turban, known as the taj-i Safavi, as a visible marker of loyalty. In manuscript illustrations from the period, the basic outfit for both men and women was a long robe over loose ankle-length trousers and a pirahan, or chemise, layered so the contrasting colors of each piece showed through.
Shah Abbas I’s reign, beginning in 1588, is widely considered one of the high points of Persian art and design, and it’s the period that gave the world the Shah Abbasi floral motif, still recognizable on textiles and rugs today, along with the termeh weaving tradition in its now-familiar form. European travelers documented just how expensive and elaborate Safavid wardrobes were. Jean Chardin, a French traveler who spent years in Iran during this period, wrote extensively about how central dress was to signaling rank at court.
Dress was also, by this point, a subject serious enough to have its own dedicated literature. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that in the late 15th century, the poet Nezam-al-Din Mahmud Qari of Yazd wrote the Divan-e Albesa, an entire collection of poems devoted to clothing terminology, complete with an index of period-specific dress vocabulary. That level of documentation is unusual for any historical costume tradition, and it’s a big part of why Safavid dress is so well understood today.
The Qajar Era (1789 to 1925)
The Qajar period kept the same layered, richly ornamented approach to dress while absorbing steadily growing European influence. Garments became more elaborate, with intricate embroidery, richer color palettes, and greater use of luxury fabrics like silk and velvet. Men typically wore long coats paired with tall hats, while women wore colorful, layered dresses finished with ornate jewelry. Foreign trade brought new fabrics and techniques into Iranian tailoring during this period as well.
One structural fact runs through both the Safavid and Qajar eras: social class in Iran was expressed mainly through the quality of textile and ornament, not through different garment shapes. A wealthy Qajar merchant and a court official might wear roughly the same style of coat, but the fabric, embroidery, and trim would tell you everything about the difference in rank between them. That principle, where the material carries the status rather than the cut, still quietly shapes how Iranian designers approach clothing today.
Photography, which arrived in Iran during the Qajar period, adds another layer most earlier eras don’t have. Court photographs from this time show textiles, arched hemlines, and heavy ornament in a level of detail no relief or painting could fully capture, which is part of why Qajar dress is often used as a visual reference point even now, alongside written accounts from European visitors who repeatedly remarked on what they called the Persian love of fashion.
For more on the specific fabrics behind both eras, see [Persian Textiles](LINK: Persian Textiles) and [Persian Motifs & Art](LINK: Persian Motifs & Art).
The Pahlavi Reforms: Iran’s First Dress Reversal
The twentieth century moved faster than the previous four hundred years combined, and it started with a government actively rewriting what people were allowed to wear.
In the mid-1930s, Reza Shah banned the veil and pushed hard for Western-style dress across Iranian society. In 1935, he went further and ordered all men to wear European-style hats. The decree provoked serious resistance. A backlash centered on the Goharshad Mosque in Mashhad turned violent, with troops suppressing the protest and significant loss of life. It remains one of the clearest examples in modern history of a government trying to legislate fashion and the public pushing back hard against it.
Under Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, enforcement relaxed considerably. The headscarf or chador became more a marker of personal or social position than a legal offense, and Western-style clothing became increasingly common, particularly in Tehran and other cities.
After the 1979 Revolution: Dress Law Reverses Again
The Islamic Revolution flipped Iran’s dress laws for a second time in less than fifty years, this time in the opposite direction. The hijab became compulsory for women in public, a change that reshaped the entire domestic fashion industry that followed. Beauty pageants ended inside Iran, and Iranian participation in international beauty and modeling competitions effectively moved into the diaspora.
For years after the revolution, domestically produced clothing options were often described as limited in variety, which pushed many Iranian women toward Western brands adapted to fit modesty requirements. Chadors and manteaus, long fitted overcoats, became everyday staples, and fashion in general took a back seat to broader social and economic concerns through the 1980s and into the 1990s.
The Last Two Decades: A Quiet Revival
This is where the story turns interesting again. Over roughly the past twenty years, a new generation of Iranian designers started treating the mandatory dress code as a design problem worth solving well, rather than a creative dead end. Brands rebuilt the manteau and headscarf with sharper tailoring, brighter colors, and genuine style. A separate group of designers went further back rather than forward, reviving pre-Islamic Persian motifs and centuries-old textile techniques and building them into modern silhouettes for both domestic and international audiences. Naghmeh Kiumarsi’s work, built around Persian calligraphy, poetry, and craft translated into contemporary womenswear, sits in this second category.
This local shift lines up with a much larger global one. Modest fashion as a category, spanning multiple countries and religions, has grown into an industry estimated at $44 billion a year, with mainstream retailers from Uniqlo to major Paris couture houses now offering modest lines. Iran’s own designers are one part of that bigger picture, not a separate, isolated case.
The infrastructure around Iranian fashion has also started catching up. In November 2025, Iran revived Tehran Fashion Week as part of the broader Tehran Design Week, and reporting on the event noted a noticeably freer atmosphere than the tightly controlled “chaste attire” shows Iran had held back in 2014 and 2015, the last time anything on that scale had been permitted. At the same time, a growing diaspora of Iranian designers has built visible careers abroad, in Europe, North America, and the Gulf, often showing heritage-driven collections on international runways and, in some cases, seeing individual pieces enter museum collections. Naghmeh Kiumarsi’s own path traces this arc closely: collections shown at Milan and Cannes Fashion Weeks, two pieces acquired into the permanent collection at National Museums Scotland in 2015, and, in September 2025, an appearance as the opening speaker at TEDx Alef in Tehran, Iran’s first TEDx event dedicated entirely to fashion and design.
For a closer look at how this modern scene actually functions today, see [Contemporary Iranian Fashion](LINK: Contemporary Iranian Fashion) and [Iranian Fashion Designers](LINK: Iranian Fashion Designers).
Why This History Still Matters
Most fashion traditions don’t survive a government trying to ban them twice in one century, in opposite directions, and still come out the other side recognizable. Iranian fashion has. The textiles and motifs that defined Safavid court dress five hundred years ago are the same ones showing up in collections shown at Milan and Cannes today, which is a genuinely rare thing for any design tradition to pull off.
Understanding this history isn’t just academic background. It’s the reason a termeh coat or a Shah Abbasi pattern on a modern garment carries weight beyond decoration. It’s a country’s entire, repeatedly interrupted relationship with its own visual identity, still being worked out one collection at a time. For the fuller picture of how all of this fits into the present day, start with [Iranian Fashion: A Complete Guide to Fashion in Iran](LINK: Iranian Fashion: A Complete Guide to Fashion in Iran) or What Is Iranian Fashion?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the earliest evidence of Iranian fashion? The earliest well-documented evidence comes from the Achaemenid Empire (550 to 330 BCE), where reliefs, seals, and coins record courtly garments and headwear used to signal rank.
Why is the Safavid era so important to Iranian fashion history? The Safavid period (1501 to 1722) produced the Shah Abbasi floral motif, refined the termeh weaving tradition, and is unusually well documented, including a 15th century book of poetry devoted entirely to clothing terminology. Many of its textiles and motifs are still used by designers today.
How did the 1979 revolution change Iranian fashion? The revolution made the hijab compulsory for women in public, reversing the more relaxed dress norms of the late Pahlavi era and reshaping the domestic fashion industry for decades afterward.
Is Iranian fashion changing again right now? Yes. Over the past two decades, designers have increasingly treated modest dress codes as a genuine design challenge rather than a limitation, and Iran revived its own Tehran Fashion Week in 2025 after roughly a decade without one.
Who represents this history in contemporary design? Designers such as Naghmeh Kiumarsi, whose collections have been shown at Milan and Cannes Fashion Weeks and whose pieces are held in the National Museums Scotland collection, work directly with historic Persian textiles and motifs in a contemporary context.
Related reading on this site
Already live:
- About Naghmeh Kiumarsi, designer biography
- Daraayi, the Persian ikat
- The Brilliance of Iranian Ethnic Attire at the Cannes Festival
- Flowers of Shah Abbas Garden, Milan Fashion Show
- EDGY FLOW, a report from TEDx Alef Tehran
Planned pages in this cluster, link once published:
- Iranian Fashion: A Complete Guide to Fashion in Iran (parent pillar)
- What Is Iranian Fashion?
- Persian Textiles
- Persian Motifs & Art
- Contemporary Iranian Fashion
- Iranian Fashion Designers
Sources
- Fashion in Safavid Iran, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Clothing x. In the Safavid and Qajar periods, Encyclopaedia Iranica
- Goharshad Mosque rebellion, Wikipedia
- Pahlavi hat, Wikipedia
- New Tehran Fashion Week set to test Iran’s morality limits, Iran International
- Contemporary Muslim Fashions exhibition, Cooper Hewitt
- Termeh, Wikipedia
- Shah Abbasi floral design, Wikipedia
- About Naghmeh Kiumarsi
