Tehran: What not to wear

In the final hour of my flight to Tehran, I started to think about my arrival outfit for the all important immigration queue. Packing for Iran was like packing for a weekend on the moon - I had only the vaguest sense of what people wore.

For a long time I think I thought 'hejab' was a particular garment of clothing. But it just means a modest way of dressing. The chador, the burka, the manteau are all forms of hejab. Lonely Planet had suggested jeans and a trench would be a suitable interim measure until I could buy a manteau (whatever that was) in Tehran. But now, as I sat on the plane about to land, I started to worry about the jeans I was wearing.

What sort of jeans were hejab? Straight leg? Waist high? Baggy boyfriend cut? Skinnies? Let's be honest, the shape of my calf would definitely be visible through my J-Brand straight legs and that, technically, was Against the Rules. But then, so were the daisy duke denim shorts with stockings I'd seen one girl sporting earlier on in the flight. I wasn't keen on using her as my modesty yardstick. In the end I changed into some black, wide leg trousers and my black trench - an outfit that made Mother Theresa look immodest.

Of course, when I arrived at the immigration queue Iranian women were wearing fitted jeans, skirts, tailored dresses and colourful kimono-style jackets. One or two even wore knee-length skirts with opaque tights (that really did surprise me, and I haven't seen it since). Their veils hung casually off beautiful dark brown buns of hair - like you might hang a towel on a door knob. I felt about as unfashionable as a velvet scrunchie (more on those later). In any case, I was waved through inspection, survived my first Tehran cab ride and arrived tired, and modest, at the Parastoo Hotel, where my slumbering travel buddy waited for me and our adventure. As suspected, I had a lot to learn about Iran...fashion and beyond.