By Hummam Sheikh Ali
DAMASCUS, Aug 23 (NNN-XINHUA) – Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, some Syrians are turning to tailor-made face masks, to add a touch of style and personality to their protective wear.
At a beauty salon in Damascus, Zeina Halal, the manager, came up with the idea, at the early stage of the spread of COVID-19 in Syria.
At first, her employees wore regular masks, but after thinking it through, Halal started designing masks for her employees with their names and the logo of the salon tailored on them.
“When we opened, we were committed to having all staff members wear masks, so the idea started here and our visitors loved the idea and started making orders to get fashionable masks,” she said.
In her salon, which takes care of visitors from hair-making, to makeup and fashion designing, Halal works on an automated sewing machine, where she input names or words and choose a pattern or logo to put on the mask.
Halal, a young brunette with dark-brown curly hair and round brown glasses that compliment the color of her hair and the roundness of her friendly face, works on the machine with a smile.
Before starting to make the masks, she would help customers choose the colours of and patterns on the masks.
Halal puts the fabric in the sewing machine and use a touch screen attached to the machine to choose the drawings and input the names or words such as “no kiss” or “keep your distance.”
She said, she is now taking special orders from customers or companies that want to make custom-made mask with company logo.
She said, people are demanding the custom-made masks as they can wash them and keep wearing them, unlike the surgical ones that need to be changed frequently.
“There is a good demand for these masks which can be worn on both sides and put logos and words on either side so that people feel they can wear them on any occasion,” she said.
“By adding pictures, names, or words and colours to masks, we encourage more people to wear them,” she said.
Firas Marwan, a customer, said his 5-year-old son did not like the regular mask so he had to come and make a special order to have a child mask with Spiderman photo on it.
“As masks have become part of our daily life, we need to make sure we are comfortable in them and that our kids love them so as to keep them on, and I think my son will love his new mask,” he said.– NNN-XINHUA
