VOGUE: It’s the palette that takes me back. The lapis and malachite on Marisa Berenson. The sheer emerald scarf draped around Lauren Hutton’s organza dress. The dusty pink of a shiraz rosé; a turquoise dome blooming out of dun brick. A mere two years after Vogue’s 1969 Henry Clarke portfolio, shot in Iran, “Fashion in the Persian-Blue Gardens of the Sun,” my mother and I were in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, buying fabric for my fifth birthday present: an Iranian-style veil, the chador. I remember the buzzing of the fluorescent lights, the crowded stalls, the bolts of fabric stacked floor-to-ceiling. Back then, before the Iranian Revolution in 1978 and ’79, chadors weren’t simply the black uniform of the Ayatollah’s followers, but were riotously various, their shades ranging from dove gray to burnt orange. I chose a meter of psychedelic paisley, a dizzying mix of blue-green peacock swirls. We took it to a tailor, who sewed it into a proper chador, with seams that made the cloth swing, and gave it a weight so it hung straight down when you held it together in your teeth, as Iranian women did when their arms were lumbered with bags or children. I loved it so much that I slept in it that night, a warm and slightly cloying sensation, like the enveloping hug of a beloved great-aunt >>>