Tajik textiles with the names of Putin and Bin Laden
In Tajikistan each textile (cloth) has a name of a popular person. Previously, I heard about this interesting phenomenon in Tajikistan but didn’t pay attention to it as long as I did not see the names of Putin and Bin Laden. I read about this in an article today(rus).
While American companies produce toilet papers with the pictures of Bin Laden on it, the Tajik companies produce a textile with the name of this man. Not surprisingly it is a black cloth. I believe that the name of Bin Laden is not chosen because he is popular among the Tajiks but simply because the name is popular and easy to remember. It is one of the ways for the producers of textile to increase the merchantability of their products. There are also types of textiles with the name of Eltsin and Putin. One of them has a very interesting name – “The tear of Gorbachev”. I guess it was produced after the collapse of Soviet Union when Gorbachev was blamed to be the main person who made it happen.
The main advantage of the Putin textile is its color and quality. It is colorful and long-lasting - it does not bleed and discolor, which is very important in warm climate of Tajikistan.
The textile producers say that sometimes customers themselves give names to textiles for convenience.
on March 30th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I think it is an interesting phenomenon, also widely in use in Samarkand and Bukhara. see my post on clothing culture in Samarkand: http://bordersca.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/clothing-culture-in-samarkand/
on March 31st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I remember the BBC’s Putin by Metre reported from Dushanbe last year. It is actaully a very interesting phenomenon.
on April 7th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
it is a very intersting comment and observation, but one point is important to make that tajikistan is not producing none of these cloth materials, and it is not to rebuke or gine credit to them that they are rpoducing anything these days, almost all cloths are brought from Dubai or somewherelse from the arab countries. but the point is that the names are only given without any understanding why this particular name, and this is due to an ignorance and againn tajik nation being imitative and just followers of whatever issue it may be in the world.