The Influence of Persian Rugs in Fashion

Persian rugs have been popular across the world for centuries and have played a major role in architecture, fashion and design across the middle east for thousand of years. Seen as a symbol of status and wealth Oriental rugs where the floor coverings of the royalty and rich, and something the general public wished to attain.

During the Safavid period a great deal of the Persian culture was exported out and spread into western societies, amongst them was Persian rugs and their designs, one of the most notorious being the Boteh (Paisley) design. 

This design dates back around 2500 years and was originally a Zoroastrian design for life and eternity. It has been a prominent feature in rugs.

Today you can still find the paisley design being used in mens ties, handkerchiefs and more recently in dresses, shirts etc.

During the most recent reign of royalty in Persia (The Pahlavi’s) the queen could bee seen wearing Persian designs & floral patterns across her clothes that greatly affected the fashion sense in Persia and the Middle East.

Minimalism in Home Decor & Fashion

From around 2007 there was a noticeable shift in trend towards minimalism in the home decor sector, no longer did people want the more traditional carpets with flowing ornate designs and rich colours. The new trend was to have carpets with nearly no design and very light colours or a very open design with light colours.

This theme would continue until the end of 2015 when leading interior designs started to move back to mixing modern simplicity with traditional Persian rugs as statement pieces in the room, and this was mirrored in fashion with major fashion houses incorporating designs into their clothes and runways again.

Major fashion houses such as Hermes, Gucci, Givenchy & Tory Burch started using Persian rugs on their catwalks mirroring the trends of interior decor of mixing modern and traditional.

Over the past 4-5 years major fashion houses and high street fashion brands have been moving back to using Persian designs in their clothing, this may be in the form of lining their catwalk with Persian rugs, to naming a collection after a rug design or city and incorporating rugs into the designs of their clothes.

In 2013 Hermes released a new collection named the Tabriz collection at their New York fashion week show, the collection was inspired by the heritage of Tabriz rugs.

With big luxury brands such as Hermes taking inspiration form Persian rugs it was likely that other brands would have been too and others would start to.

One strong example of couture fashion dabbling in this trend is Alexander McQueen, he took a large Persian Nanaj rug a turned it into a 3 piece suit.

With the trend now fully starting to reach the mainstream it is likely to grow in popularity.

Vintage and Antique Rug Collections are rugs from famous cities in Iran in the rug industry that are about 30 to 80 years old and have been transformed into modern and antique style.

Source: http://www.bakhtiyar.com/blog/2018/2/15/the-influence-of-persian-rugs-in-fashion