DUBAI: After a huge success in New York Fashion Week, Tokyo and Paris Fashion Week, the Arab Fashion Week will be hosting its first dwarf fashion show on May 20. Fifteen little glamorous fashionistas from Dubai and all over the world, will walk down the Dubai runway in creations designed and made in NYC by American Wardrobe.
Favorited by Tyra Banks, a pioneer in showcasing models of all shapes and colors, the International Dwarf Fashion Show is not your average size red carpet event.
Unlike the 5.9 inch and 120 pound models one usually sees on the catwalk, Arab Fashion Week will bring back the essence of the fashion by going beyond the physical height standard: Each model is less than four feet!
The goal is to empower women by reversing the diktats of beauty and breaking down stereotypes. For too long, disabled individuals affected by dwarfism have been the victims of discrimination. The International Dwarf Fashion Show to be held during the next Arab Fashion Week will celebrate little people’s contribution to social diversity.
Not your average size event: Short models to strut their stuff at Arab Fashion Week
Not your average size event: Short models to strut their stuff at Arab Fashion Week
Parrots rescued as landslide-hit Sicilian town saves pets
- Residents queued up at a fire service command point just outside the high-risk, evacuated “red zone” to be accompanied inside to rescue pets
- Some locals feed their animals but leave them where they are, because they have no place to take them
NISCEMI, Italy: Pino Terzo Di Dio was in tears as firefighters carried his beloved parrots out of his home, which has been cordoned off as his town teeters on a cliff edge.
They were the latest pets to be saved by firefighters from hundreds of homes that were evacuated in the Sicilian town of Niscemi after a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) long stretch of hillside collapsed.
“They are scared,” Di Dio told AFP, his voice breaking as the emergency workers carried the parrots — four cockatiels and a parakeet — out of his house in two cages, buffeted by the wind.
The town, built on unstable terrain, was battered by a powerful storm which hit southern Italy last week.
There were no deaths or injuries from Sunday’s landslide, but experts say the gulf could extend when it rains again.
- ‘Lost everything’ -
Residents queued up at a fire service command point just outside the high-risk, evacuated “red zone” to be accompanied inside to rescue pets or gather belongings from important documents to clean underwear.
Some locals feed their animals but leave them where they are, because they have no place to take them.
Di Dio said his bird feeders were full but one of the parrots “tends to knock the water onto the floor,” and feared they may have been without water for days.
The 53-year-old said he had been moving between friends’ houses since the disaster.
“It’s been four days that I’ve barely washed. I smell like a goat, but that’s fine,” he said.
All his attention was on the yellow and grey birds, aged between seven and 13, and where they will go now.
“Let’s hope that someone with a kind heart will take care of them. The important thing is that they treat them well,” he said.
“I don’t have a home, I’ve lost everything.”
- ‘Help us’ -
Firefighter Franco Turco said emergency workers had rescued “quite a few dogs, cats — and now parrots.”
The team was working out how to rescue horses in fields below the baroque town, where deep fissures caused by the landslide were complicating access.
In the meantime, some 24 firefighters have carried out 80 missions to recover belongings in the red zone, which extends 150 meters from the cliff face.
But not even they enter the 50 meters buffer zone before the edge.
Some residents “have cried, have hugged us,” he said.
In the same building as Di Dio’s parrots, a woman who did not want to be named pulled a shopping trolley and black plastic bags full of belongings out of the house and onto the street.
In her arms she carried a ceramic statue of the Madonna, which had once stood at the foot of her stairs.
“May the Madonna help us,” she said.
