Since the revolution of 1979 all women in Iran, including foreigners, have been required by law to wear loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures. They must also cover their hair. This form of dressing is known as hijab, a term that refers in general to ‘modest’ dress, and is also used to refer specifically to the hair-covering.

Signs in public places show officially acceptable versions of hijab: the chador (literally ‘tent’ in Farsi), an all-encompassing, head-to-toe black garment held closed with hand or teeth; or a manteau (shapeless coat or coat dress) and a rusari (scarf) covering the hair, neck and décolletage. Girls must start to wear hijab when they reach puberty, but many start from a much earlier age (we’ve seen plenty of babies and toddlers sporting Islamic head coverings).

In reality the dress code is more relaxed and open to interpretation. It’s not unusual to see young women in the larger cities wearing figure-hugging manteaus (often tightly belted trench-coats), skinny jeans, high heels and colourful rusaris that have been arranged to offer plentiful glimpses of hair and neck. But in the smaller cities, towns and villages this rarely happens – the chador is common and those who don’t wear it are clad in an ensemble of shapeless coat, black pants, sensible shoes and a maqna’e (nun-like head scarf, or wimple). Colour schemes are uniformly dull.

Iranian women who flout hijab can find themselves in serious trouble. Their infringements have included wearing sunglasses above the headscarf, failing to wear a coat that fully covered their bottom, wearing bright colours, wearing nail polish, wearing sandals that show the feet or ankles, and not fully covering their hair.

Fortunately, foreign women are not usually judged as harshly as Iranian women when it comes to hijab, and few Iranians will bat an eyelid if you have your fringe or a bit of neck or hair showing. It pays to look at what women around you are wearing; for example, you’ll want to dress more conservatively in Qom than you would in Tehran.