In the 1990s, the New York-based label Michael and Hushi staged a fashion show in which models walked the runway wearing traditional Iranian chadors while holding machine guns. The spectacle transformed garments associated with Iranian religious and social identity into a deliberately confrontational image of militarized glamour, colliding Middle Eastern heritage with the theatrical aggression of club culture and avant-garde fashion. It was characteristic of Hushidar Mortezaie's broader practice: using collaged Persian imagery, political references, glamour, and kitsch to question how Iranian identity was packaged and consumed in Western fashion. Mortezaie, who had left Tehran with his family as a child for political reasons and later worked in New York's downtown fashion and nightlife milieu, used the label's hybrid Western and Middle Eastern vocabulary to make cultural dislocation visible rather than neutral. The presentation was not an occult ritual or evidence of actual violence, but its use of firearms as runway props created a stark and unsettling performance-art image. Michael and Hushi's work subsequently circulated through celebrity culture and popular media, including Sex and the City and the 1999 film Fight Club, helping preserve the label's reputation for politically charged, highly theatrical fashion.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1990s
Chadors and Machine Guns: Michael and Hushi's Militarized Persian Fashion Spectacle
Michael and Hushi, founded by Hushidar Mortezaie and Michael Sears / 1990s
In the 1990s, the New York-based label Michael and Hushi staged a fashion show in which models walked the runway wearing traditional Iranian chadors while holding machine guns. The spectacle transformed garments associated with Iranian religious and social identity into a deliberately confrontational image of militarized glamour, colliding Middle Eastern heritage with the theatrical aggression of club culture and avant-garde fashion. It was characteristic of Hushidar Mortezaie's broader practice: using collaged Persian imagery, political references, glamour, and kitsch to question how Iranian identity was packaged and consumed in Western fashion. Mortezaie, who had left Tehran with his family as a child for political reasons and later worked in New York's downtown fashion and nightlife milieu, used the label's hybrid Western and Middle Eastern vocabulary to make cultural dislocation visible rather than neutral. The presentation was not an occult ritual or evidence of actual violence, but its use of firearms as runway props created a stark and unsettling performance-art image. Michael and Hushi's work subsequently circulated through celebrity culture and popular media, including Sex and the City and the 1999 film Fight Club, helping preserve the label's reputation for politically charged, highly theatrical fashion.
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