Inseparability

Casually speaking, linen suits permit deviation. The trousers may part ways with their blazer, adopt another shade, and still fall within the margins of acceptable taste. Yes, the gesture requires thought. Yes, it raises the chances of failure. Still, it is doable. And the same can be said of most outfits - be it a wool suit or a pair of jeans with any top.

One might assume a linen takm mazbūt allows for the same. After all, isn’t a linen suit its closest kin? But no, the moment you part its two halves, something falls apart.

Fouad Elkoury, Oum Koulthoum Café in Luxor, 1990, ink-jet print, 23 3/4 × 35 1/2″.

This is not an aesthetic preference. And we are not those to demand reasons for everything. But this particular resistance within the sartorial concept of takm mazbūt - silent, consistent - we could not ignore. Why can’t one simply get away with a variation of colour within takm mazbūt? And if you identify as a stylist, or aspire to claim a place near the icons of fashion, here lies your next challenge (though you may lose whatever momentum you’ve gained through that ridiculous attempt).

As for our reasoning, it begins with identifying its true counterpart. It is not the linen suit. The upper half of takm mazbūt is neither shirt nor blazer - it is cut to contain both, without requiring a third beneath. Already a total form, without a T-shirt or collar below (that is not to say you cannot go full Naguib Mahfouz and opt for an additional collar come autumn time).

Which leads to a larger claim. If the suit is one lineage, and the thawb - the traditional uninterrupted garment also known as galabeya - is another, then takm mazbūt does not descend from the suit. That matters.

Ontologically speaking, its starting point could never have been the suit. It was made to deal with our climates as an alternative to the suit. Which puts us in the thawb’s territory.

We argue that it is closer to the thawb in its continuity, in its flow. Separated only by a subtle page-break at the waist and a more defined division into two legs, the integrity holds.

Especially when you consider that it takes this prior shift in perspective to rationalise the inseparability of shades. Meaning: to answer our mysterious main question, we must view takm mazbūt through the path-dependencies shaped by the institution of the thawb. Then we can say: you would never see a thawb worn tastefully in two colours, top and bottom. takm mazbūt, as a garment of continuity, naturally carries the same refusal.

Which brings us to the world of ideals, carried away in thoughts of only if. Like: only if that natural resistance to separability existed among the people who wore it best…