[ePub] Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures by Reina Lewis in Arts-Photography

Review

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Letter to a Young Muslim FashionistaBy Etienne RPSo yoursquo;ve picked up this book because you think Muslim fashion is the next new thing. Yoursquo;ve made a good choice: this book is totally made for you. It is a book that will teach you things. give you ideas. and make you think. Donrsquo;t expect tips on what to wear and how to wear it. though: this you will have to decide for yourself. If who you are is what you wear. then you cannot delegate this task to a third party. But reading Muslim Fashion will help you make your own choices and dress on your own terms. Maybe you wonrsquo;t feel the same after reading it. Maybe your image will look different into the mirror. This is what they call a transformative book: it will make you see things differently. This is the good thing about reading books in general: you can turn them to your own use. So if this book helps you dress smarter. so be it. But it may also help you think about what you wear and why you wear it. If your style of dress makes a statement. be sure it includes the word fashion in it.To be frank with you. you may find Muslim Fashion a bit hard to read. But relax: this book review is here to help you through the reading. It will give you tips that will make understand things a lot easier. So donrsquo;t freak out if you see long sentences and difficult words. This is how people working as university professors make a living. Sentences are like skirts: you can wear them long or short according to your likes and dislikes. Trust me: I will use short sentences to describe long hijabs and ample robes. Or at least Irsquo;ll try. As a full disclosure. I donrsquo;t work in the fashion industry. and I am not involved in any way with Muslim fashion. I just like to read difficult books and try to make them simpler to read by writing book reviews. I wrote this one especially for you. If you find it helpful. you may provide feedback by clicking on the lsquo;helpfulrsquo; button or by writing a comment. But please understand: I am not a specialist in Muslim or modest fashion. or in any womenrsquo;s fashion for that respect. So take my writing with a pinch of salt: if you disagree with what you read. blame the author of the book. not me.I am starting from the premise that you are already familiar with basic vocabulary. So you can tell a niqab from an abaya. a jilbab from a hijab. or a shayla from a turban. You may also be familiar with ethnic clothing: burqa cover from Afghanistan. kebaya dress from South-East Asia. chador cloak from Iran. tesettuuml;r veil from Turkey. salwar kameez outfit from South Asia. I am also assuming that you know what pious fashion. or modest fashion. is about. So you may be interested to learn where it came from. or how it varies in time and place. The important point to make is that modest fashion is not only about To Veil or Not To Veil. And even if you do. there are many different styles to veiling. Indeed. you may wish to design your own style. based on examples and references glimpsed in magazines or on the street. There are also a lot of tutorials available on Youtube. This is not pure exhibition: people choose what to show and what to hide. All people do.Some islamic clothing are clearly outside the purview of fashion. This is clearly the case with burqa. niqab. or abayamdash;although you may be interested to learn that some embroidered abaya sell for thousands of dollars in Gulf states. Indeed. some people challenge the idea that you can be both pious and fashionable at the same time. For them. a modest outlook is the antithesis of fashion: modesty is to break free from the tyranny of appearance. to contest the idolatry of the body. And indeed. the fashion world has accustomed us with habits that are far from restrained or modest. Exposed nudity. promiscuity between models and their admirers. rumors of drug consumption and tales of anorexia make the catwalk sound like a freak show. No wonder some customers and clothes designers want to break free from this model. But thatrsquo;s the thing about fashion: no fashion is still fashion. especially when it becomes fashionable. This is what is happening with Muslim fashion; and this is the story that the author Reina Lewis recollects in her book.On a first look. no industry could be farther from fashion than the tesettuuml;r producers in Turkey. This is a country that brands itself secular and where the wearing of headscarves is frowned upon by the state. with an outright ban in schools and colleges or in the national parliament. Women wearing the local headscarf or tesettuuml;r have other concerns than fashion. Since Atatuuml;rk promoted western clothing and western mores. wearing the veil has always been coded as old-fashioned. rural or excessively religious in secular Turkey. But think again: tesettuuml;r companies have gained market share at home and abroad. and are now competing on brand image and seasonal collections. Todayrsquo;s veiling-fashion producers market colorful and constantly changing styles. from bold and close-fitting to more conservative ones. Istanbul is now developing itself as a fashion city with a critical mass of consumers and fashion specialists. and Muslim fashion is definitely part of the show. For many young Islamic women. wearing a headscarf marks them off as different from their mothers who are going out bareheaded. This is precisely the point: who would like to look exactly like her mother? And as fashion catalogues and lifestyle magazines will show you. there are many ways to wear the tesettuuml;r.Doing research for her book. Reina Lewis interviewed several shop workers wearing the hijab in fashion stores or malls located in several British cities. The interviews were conducted between 2005 and 2010. and I am sure many things have changed since then. But maybe some things havenrsquo;t. UK law promotes employment equality regardless of religion or belief. and so sales persons have the right to wear the hijab if they choose to do so. Shop rules may define how workers dress and present themselves. but only up to a point. Discrimination on grounds of religion can bring an employer to court. Of course. how sales assistants dress is important for their boss and for their clients. They are the brandrsquo;s ambassadors. and their style and advice will help match the product and the consumer. In this context. familiarity with modest or pious style can be an asset. especially in neighborhoods populated by Muslim families. Take the case of Y.S. for instance. She didnrsquo;t have to apply for a job: she was recruited while shopping in a branch of Dorothy Perkins because the store manager thought she looked cool. She wore her hijab with style and personality. and being modest and trendy was exactly the image the store wanted to project.Here I may introduce a few concepts proposed by Pierre Bourdieu. a French sociologist. For Bourdieu. style is a form of symbolic capital: it is something that you can cultivate and that can be converted into forms of economic capital. like finding a job in a lifestyle magazine or a fashion store. Style is also a component of habitus. a social property of individuals that orients human behavior without strictly determining it. In a book called La Distinction. Bourdieu described the rise of a new class of cultural intermediaries working in service activities: sales. marketing. advertising. public relations. fashion. decoration. and so on. Upwardly mobile. these middle class individuals used their symbolic capital and were driven by their habitus to give legitimacy to new forms of cultural activities: minor arts such as photography or jazz music. self-presentation through fashion and lifestyle. and mass consumption of goods and appliances designed to make life easier. The young fashionistas described in Muslim Fashion are the heirs of these trendsetters. They do not act in isolation. but in a field (another important concept from Bourdieu) composed of many players and sources of authority. Only this field is not much cultural as it is religious. As surprising as it may seem. women participating in Muslim fashion are also religious intermediaries.Fashion is usually regarded outside of the mainstream of religious concerns. Except for Islam: in this case many peoplemdash;Muslim and non-Muslimmdash;have an opinion on what Islamic women should and shouldnrsquo;t wear. As Reina Lewis describes it in another chapter. Muslim lifestyle magazines and fashion catalogues are faced with a conundrum. How to represent womenrsquo;s bodies? Some magazines such as Azizah have a policy of always putting a model with a headscarf on their cover. Others. such as the American quarterly Muslim Girl. do exactly the opposite: their idea is to represent as many different girls as possible and all their different approaches to faith. Still others avoid photographs of the human form. or take pictures of women viewed from behind so as not to show their face. Emel. another lifestyle magazine. takes straight-up photos of real people wearing street fashion but avoids professional models. The representation of female bodies raise even more controversies online. where readers and commentators are prompt to express their views in reaction to blog posts or social media pictures. Reina Lewis describes how the rise of online brands selling modest apparel was accompanied by the development of a lively blogosphere and social media devoted to modest style.A new category of ldquo;modest fashionrdquo; has therefore emerged and become legitimized on the Internet. Women can now find products designed with modesty in mind. consult style guides and join in fashion discussions about how to style modesty. These discussions are not necessarily faith-based and inspired by Islam: they can be inter-faithmdash;as some Christian groups or Jewish believers have similar modesty needsmdash;or based on no faith at all. They are increasingly cosmopolitan: see for example the new fashion line designed by Hana Tajima. an English woman based in Malaysia. which was launched in Singapore by Uniqlo. a Japanese apparel company. I have to confess I learned more from browsing the web using the ldquo;modest fashionrdquo; keyword than from reading long articles about secularity and attitudes considered as ostentatiously religious in my own countrymdash;which is France. Speaking of France. if I have a minor quibble with Reina Lewisrsquo; book. it is when she alludes to a supposedly outright ban of Islamic dress in France. whereas the limitations introduced by French law are only limited to certain types of dressmdash;the face-veilmdash;or to certain locations. such as schools. And even these laws may evolve. along with the changing attitudes among the French public. Paris has long been the capital of fashion: my personal hope is that it will also become a magnet for the creation and expression of Muslim fashion.0 of 2 people found the following review helpful. YawnBy jjaSo boring. Two pics.