Europe's practicing Muslims have finally found their fit: An Italian clothes firm is producing jeans that are tailor-made for the Islamic world.
The trousers, licensed by an Udine-based firm named Al Quds, are the brainchild of Luca Corradi, an Italian stylist.
"I couldn't help noticing that Muslims bend down to pray several times a day. This movement is not very common in our culture," Corradi told reporters last week.
Higher waist
Corradi realized that Muslims would find Western jeans uncomfortable. So he came up with trousers that are less tight and have a higher waist.
Because Muslims usually take off their watches, glasses and other personal objects during prayer, he also designed larger pockets.
Finally, the seams are made in green -- a sacred color in the Islamic world -- while the shabby look so popular in Western Europe is snubbed.
On Italy's shelves as from last week, the jeans cost 18 euros (US$21).
Because they are being sold by a major French supermarket chain, they should soon find a distribution channel in other European countries as well.
But Al Quds, which is the Arab name for Jerusalem, has also set its sights on the Middle East.
"Our stylist is looking for some help among his Arab colleagues. We hope they will help us start producing a wider range of trousers in the not so distant future," Cavalli said.
Strictly commercial
Asked about the current controversy which surrounds the publication by Western newspapers of cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, Cavalli said that the Al Quds initiative was "primarily commercial, rather than political."
However, she said that it was time to put an end to the traditional association between jeans and the US.
"Not many people know that jeans were first invented in the Italian city of Genoa, some 200 years ago," Cavalli said.
The jeans should find plenty of buyers among Italy's 700,000 Muslims.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS