But not a real green dress, that's cruel

When I started reading about Gulf women's clothing, I read about something called a half-niqab.

What I've been calling a niqab, and what Gulf Arabs apparently call a burqa, is a light piece of cloth that covers all of a woman's face, with an opening for the eyes:		A half-niqab covers the lower part of the face, but leaves the forehead visible -- usually more visible than in this picture:

Before last week, we'd never seen anyone wearing a half-face niqab. Women we saw wore either the full niqab or just a shayla. Suddenly, half-niqabs are now everywhere; every time we visit a mall we see at least half a dozen women in half-niqabs.

So what happened? Where did they all come from? My theory is that early summer is half-niqab season, because they're cooler than full niqabs; Justin's theory is that the half-niqab is just suddenly the in thing. Any other ideas?