But that’s how the conservative, mainly Muslim, authorities in Chechnya like it:

“Chechen women are the most beautiful in the world and if we dress them up in accordance with our traditions, it will only multiply their beauty,” said the Republic’s President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Last month, Kadyrov told shop owners they should stop selling European-style dresses, telling them their businesses would be shut if they didn’t. But a compromise was eventually found: the clothes could be sold, but only if anything too revealing was covered up first.

“We shouldn’t take off the cloak, please don’t film the girl!” a shop assistant was telling RT crew when a young girl in the shop was changing the jacket worn above dress.

Twenty-three-year-old Zalina was there looking for a wedding dress for her big day. Her chosen outfit was meant to be open at the top, but she added a bolero to wear over her shoulders and back:

“No, I won’t take off the bolero, otherwise they’ll quickly deport me from Chechnya”.

Zalina is joking, but the shop owner says, they will no longer stock revealing dresses, including below-the-shoulder or low-backed designs. Most important is that they must be completely closed, in order to avoid offending the Muslim sensibilities of Chechnya.

“Our girls are progressive,” Zinaida Taisumova, the wedding shop owner, said. “They want European-style dresses, but high-necked. We choose the gowns and our seamstresses customize them”.

Chechen girls who dream of family wedding dresses will be in great demand whatever happens, said Zinaida. She has been in this business for nearly two decades, even through the two anti-terrorist campaigns in Chechnya.

Chechen shop owners were worried that moves to stop the sale of European style-wedding dresses would put them out of business. But once a solution was found to save the modesty of new brides, it was business as usual. Now Chechen women can have their pick of dresses, but it looks as though the only man to see their uncovered shoulders will be the husband.