Dangerous Fashion: Places where the Fashion Police Can Send You to Prison

Living in the U.K we can sometimes forget how relaxed our dress codes actually are. Sure, it's frowned upon to go to your job in a bank in shorts and sandals, or turn up at your best friends wedding in a long white dress, but the worst that could happen in a ticking off by your boss, or becoming a social pariah in your friendship group. This weekend two young girls were thrown out of a Wetherspoons pub in Reading for wearing matching halter-neck bra-lets, long skirts and trainers. The Manager deemed their clothing inappropriate and akin to a man being 'topless'. The online backlash was widespread, with most coming down firmly on the side of the two girls and calling for the resignation/firing of the Manager and his outdated views on women's bodies and attire. 

The U.Ks laid back view on what we are allowed to wear is one of the reasons it is one of the world's greatest and most innovative places for fashion talent. Fashion as a form of self expression is one freedom many across the world, don't have however.

Less than a month ago in North Korea, that fashion staple in every woman's (and some men's) wardrobes,  the skinny jean, was banned. There are many reasons why skinny jeans could be deemed bad for you - low sperm count and yeast infections for starters, but North Korea decried the fashion fixture as Western capitalist propaganda, and outlawed it as such. Here is a brief look at some countries across the world where what you wear can have you thrown in the gulag - or the very least, slapped with a hefty fine:

North Korea

According to Rodong Sinmum, the official newspaper of the North Korean government, Kim Jong-un has long expressed a concern about how young people are increasingly embracing Western fashion trends. Items long branded 'anti-socialist' and banned by the North Korean Republic, include ripped jeans, blue jeans, mullets, spiky and dyed hair, body piercings and clothing with foreign lettering (particularly Latin lettering) and trousers for women. And that's before we even start on Kim's short list of acceptable hairstyles. 

At the end of May,  skinny jeans were added to the ever-growing list of clothing deemed to support a 'capitalistic lifestyle' in the totalitarian state, and were outlawed.

Rodong Sinmum declared, 

“History teaches us a crucial lesson that a country can become vulnerable and eventually collapse like a damp wall regardless of its economic and defense power if we do not hold on to our own lifestyle. We must be wary of even the slightest sign of the capitalist lifestyle and fight to get rid of them.”

Skinny jeans were a staple of ‘00s indie fashion and became synonymous with certain bands of the era, such as the Libertines and Pete Doherty's sporting of the style.

Trainspotting actor Ewen Bremner, who played Spud in the 1996 film, further claimed the film’s costume designer in fact helped popularise skinny jeans for men.

“Actually our costume designer Rachel Fleming basically invented skinny jeans for men with Trainspotting. They didn’t exist before!” he said in 2017. “She would take women’s jeans and re-stitch them, or men’s jeans and cut them apart and cut them apart and restitch them. That was down to her, that whole movement!”

Proper dress in North Korea is considered vital to the country’s health. According to the Guardian, a radio broadcast in 2005 titled, “Dressing in accordance with our people’s emotion and taste” informed North Koreans that looking tidy would keep the capitalists away and would promote “the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era.”

The consequences for not dressing in accordance with the people’s emotion are dire. North Korean women face hard labor if they are caught wearing trousers instead of skirts. In 1986, Kim Jong Il issued a decree urging women to wear traditional Korean attire. “The Dear Leader has said national character shows up not only in language, etiquette and morals but in attire as well,” official North Korean website Uriminzokkiri said in 2009. According to the site, Kim said that the country’s traditional garb is a “source of [national] pride.”

Sudan: trousers for women, make-up for men

Sudanese protestor, Lubna Hussain

North Korea is not the only country where men wear the trousers: in Sudan in 2014, there was outrage as nine women faced 40 lashes for the crime of wearing western-style slacks. Harsh interpretations of sharia law mean thousands of Sudanese women are arrested each year for “public order” offences such as wearing short skirts and dancing with men. The offences aren’t entirely gender specific: in 2010 Sudanese police arrested dozens of women protesting against Islamic decency laws after a video of a woman being publicly flogged appeared on the Internet. In the same year, a Sudanese court convicted seven men of indecency. The men, all amateur models in the “Sudanese Next Top Model Fashion Show” in Khartoum in June 2010, were accused of wearing makeup. They were fined 200 Sudanese pounds each, as was their makeup artist, a woman.

Saudi Arabia: bare skin for women, cross-dressing for men

It doesn’t matter whether you’re local or foreign – if you’re a woman and you’re in Saudi Arabia, flashing an inch of flesh is a criminal act. Muslim women are required to wear a niqab and long black cloak called an abaya, while foreign women can get away with a long coat and bare head, if they dare. 

Men face their own restrictions, though these are mostly related to women’s dress as well. In 2009, the Saudi government arrested 67 men on accusations of cross-dressing at a private party in Riyadh celebrating Filipino Independence Day. This follows a similar incident in March 2005, when over 100 men were detained for imitating women at another private party in the city of Jeddah. A government newspaper said that the men were dancing and “behaving like women.” While they initially were sentenced to imprisonment and flogging, they were later pardoned and released.

France: niqabs and burqas

France introduced a “burqa ban” in 2010, a law that made it illegal for people to cover their faces in public. Aimed at everything from motorcycle helmets to hoods and balaclavas, the law has been widely criticized as discriminatory towards Muslim women, who wear burqas and niqabs for religious reasons. 

Police made the first two arrests under the new law on the day it went into effect, taking two women into custody at a rally in front of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. Under the rules, police are forbidden from asking women to remove their veils in public, but must escort them back to a police station where they will be forced to remove it.

France’s discomfort with public displays of religion is nothing new: The wearing of headscarves in state schools has been banned since 2004. French Muslims claimed the ban to be a symbolic, discriminatory response to a problem that doesn’t exist: Fewer than 2,000 women in France are believed to wear full face coverings. 

In 2014, a case brought against the ruling was rejected by the European Court of Human Rights, on grounds that uncovered faces encourage citizens to “live together”.

Uganda: miniskirts

It’s a bad time, too, for women in socially conservative Uganda, who face arrest if they’re seen wearing skirts or shorts “above the knee”, following new legislation that bans “indecent dressing”. Part of a new anti-pornography bill, the law has led to several incidents of women being harassed and assaulted in the streets. Following mass protests in the streets of Kampala, the prime minister has announced he will review the law.

Bhutan: Western clothing

The debate: Bhutan’s former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck was so eager to put Buddhist teachings into action that he promoted the metric of “gross national happiness” as an alternative to traditional economic development measures. He also, however, found some less warm and fuzzy ways of preserving traditional Bhutanese culture from what he saw as corrupting outside influences — among them, draconian restrictions on clothing.

Since 1990, Bhutanese have been required by law to follow the official national dress code, known as Driglam Namzha, in public. For men, that involves a knee-length robe known as a gho. For women, it’s a type of ankle-length kimono called a kira. Those caught wearing anything else can be subject to a $3.30 fine, which amounts to three days’ wages. The rules are even more specific for civil servants, who must wear sashes of various colors and designs depending on their office. Bhutanese have evolved some bizarre fashion responses to the law, including the briefly in vogue practice of wearing jeans under the gho.

Driglam Namzha is just one of the cultural laws resented by the Hindu Nepalese community in southern Bhutan, which has been persecuted for years by the Bhutanese government.   

And worth a brief mention...

Chechnya: a bare neck for women

The conservative Islamic culture of Chechnya frowns upon women who leave their homes without a headscarf. There is no explicit law declaring this a mandatory as such, but women might succumb to public harassment if they don’t adhere to this dress code.

Uganda: Miniskirts for women

Uganda is famous for its ban on miniskirts and any clothing that exposes breasts or thighs, right after it passed an anti-pornography bill in 2014. The bill claims that it is illegal to “dress indecently”.Women wearing skirts having a hemline above their knee can face criminal prosecution.

Mordovia: bans on Hijab

Want to show off your fabulous new hairdo? Then no place can serve you better than the Stavropol Territory and Republic of Mordovia in Russia which has foisted an prohibition on women wearing headscarves.

Qatar: leggings

Sadly, leggings do not pass the modesty meter in Qatar and should not be worn publicly. This notoriously strict Islamic country also constrains tourists from wearing leggings.

Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus: Lacy underwear

In 2015, women protested against a ban on synthetic lacy underwear. The government officials claimed that their idea was to promote better vaginal health by encouraging women to wear “breathable, comfortable cotton” materials. Since then, there has, reportedly, been a ban on production, import and sale of synthetic, lace underwear.