DUBAI: A vintage carnival in Australia provided the inspiration for Emirati designer Lamya Abedin’s show at Arab Fashion Week in Dubai that combined frills and sequins with Muslim modesty. Abedin said she followed every detail of the century-old fair, which she visited while traveling with her husband and children, for her collection “Voyage of the Carnival” — right down to the music and make-up.

“I loved the vibes,” the designer told AFP in an interview following her recent show.

“There were the crazy mirrors, the music, the whole ambience attracted me. I felt that this is my inspiration,” added the mother of three, who was accompanied during the show by her husband, uncle, and children.

“I wanted to show how in vintage fairs in the past people used to dress up” unlike today when they just wear jeans and T-shirts, she said.

To achieve this look, “I mixed modernity with the vintage feel,” explained Abedin, dressed in a long silver sequin-studded coat and a traditional black scarf covering most of her hair.

Her show was preceded by men in tailcoats and black hats on unicycles and stilts entertaining an audience of mostly women — some in mini-dresses and others in traditional black Abayas and even a niqab face veil — before her assistant came in singing an American dance-pop song. Carnival music accompanied a background video of acrobats and a circus tent as models in strawberry blond wigs with hats and flower headbands strutted down the catwalk, some in chequered circus stockings.

“I follow a theme,” said Abedin.

“The look should be complete with the theme so I could let the people live the story,” she added.