World’s first two piece Islamic swimsuit, the burkini

What do you get when you cross Australian beach culture with a desire to remain clothed in a way acceptable to Muslim women? If you’re designer Aheda Zanetti, you get what she says is the world’s first twopiece Islamic swimsuit, the burkini.

While other Islamic swimsuits exist, Zanetti says her lightweight, head-to-ankle costumes are the first to be streamlined down to a two-piece suit incorporating a head covering.

With Australian beaches full of girls in skimpy bikinis and revealing one-pieces, there was a “hole in the market that needed to be filled” for more modest beachwear, she said.

“A lot of girls were missing out, a lot of women were missing out, on a lot of sporting activities, including swimming,” Ms Zanetti told AFP from the clutter of her south-western Sydney shopfront.

“There was nothing really suitable for them to wear if they wanted to participate in sport. And if they did participate in sports with a veil, or whatever they wanted to wear, there really wasn’t something suitable. The fabric was not right, the construction wasn’t right.” Zanetti is something of an accidental designer. Trained as a hairdresser, she has never worn a burqa, the restrictive allencompassing gown worn by women in more conservative Muslim cultures from which her full-body swimsuits take their name. And she never wore a veil until she began designing sportswear.

But the 39-year-old mother-of-four realised that there would be a market for Islamic sportswear when she saw her hijab-wearing niece play netball. “And when I was looking at her playing sport with a two-piece veil and a skivvy (long-sleeved, high necked shirt) and the pants and then her netball jersey on top and then her skirt, I thought, ‘Oh my god, there must be something better than this’,” she said.

Lebanon-born Zanetti, at first, created a crop top which incorporated a veil into a modest shirt. She later moved into other sportswear items, including the swimwear, all the while keeping to her motto: “Modesty is number one.” Her company Ahiida in Sydney’s Punchbowl now receives hundreds of requests from around the country and overseas for the quick-drying, polyester burkinis which cost between $125-156.

The product has not been without controversy in Australia where riots erupted on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach in December 2005 when young white mobs attacked West Asian youths in an attempt to “reclaim” the beach.

“Like today I got an email from a guy saying, ‘Muslim women are hot, why can’t you just get them to wear the normal bikinis so we can appreciate them more?’ Or things like that.” She has also been attacked by fellow-Muslims describing her outfits as a disgrace. “I have had a death threat over my phone from (within) Australia: ‘If you ever advertise in a newspaper again I will make sure that you’re...’ I’ve had people put the burkinis in pornos and really disgraced it. But you know what? I don’t take much (notice) of it.” The Cronulla riots, the country’s worst racial violence, prompted widespread debate about the extent of latent racism in this multiethnic nation.