TEHRAN: Victoria's Secret has arrived in Tehran. So have the Gap, Diesel, Benetton and Black & Decker. A quarter-century after a mass movement inspired by Islam ended 2,500 years of monarchy, Iran's revolutionary society is moving on.

Yet, still trapped in transition, the Islamic republic is full of telling and sometimes bizarre contradictions. At demonstrations marking the 25th anniversary of the US embassy take over last month, participants handed out cards listing companies to boycott, including Calvin Klein, because they do business with Israel.

But all over Tehran, billboards that once would have been reserved for revolutionary slogans and portraits of Iranians killed in the war with Iraq now advertise Calvin Klein.

Victoria's Secret is not a legal franchise. US economic sanctions ban American businesses from doing business with Iran. So Iranian entrepreneurs buy brand-name goods abroad and resell them in their own shops - often with the brand replacing the shop name on storefront signs.

Some shopping sections of Tehran - and the teen-agers who frequent them - are beginning to look like what one would find at shopping malls in suburban America. The shop with sexy lingerie is a bit more discreet - marked only by a trademark pink-and-white-striped Victoria's Secret bag in the window.

"Iran is now doing pretty much the same things as during the Shah's era, except for symbols like women's scarves and 'Death to America' - and most people don't mean that anymore, either," said a prominent banker in Iran, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The modest clothing rules for girls and women have relaxed a great deal, too. Especially among the young, coats called 'roupoushes' are now so short they end high on the thigh - with slits going even higher.

The transformation of Iran's most cosmopolitan city is reflected even in its traffic. In the early years of the revolution, checkpoints manned by morality squads often popped up at night to ensure that women riding in cars with men were either blood relatives or spouses.

Now, Tehran is flooded with a new breed of law enforcement: traffic cops and meter men. They represent an attempt to control the capital's chaotic streets, where free-for-all rules account for one of the highest accident rates in the world.

Taboos on dating in public have largely ceased to matter - except for parents' restrictions. In the early days of the revolution, the only couples holding hands in public were married.

Attendants in theatres checked during movies - in which women had to be depicted in Islamic dress - to ensure couples behaved. And well over half of marriages were arranged by families.

Today, the assumption is that people holding hands are not married, Iranians say. And no one monitors behaviour in theatres, where one of the most popular twin features this month was "Kill Bill" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." -Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.