FASHIONING FAITHFUL BODIES

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1 FASHIONING FAITHFUL BODIES London College of Fashion 20 John Princes Street London W1G 0BJ REINAPROGRAMMEMASTER 2.indd 1

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3 Timetable Registration & Coffee 09: Session Chair: Professor Frances Corner OBE, Head of College, London College of Fashion Welcome: Frances Corner, Head of London College of Fashion Reina Lewis, London College of Fashion Fashion Forward and Faithtastic! Online modest fashion and the development of women as religious interpreters and intermediaries Annelies Moors, University of Amsterdam Mediating Muslim Modesty Online Discussion Coffee Session Chair: Dr Sarah Cheang, Coordinator of Cultural and Historical Studies Research Hub, London College of Fashion Emma Tarlo, Goldsmiths, London Inter and IntraFaith Concepts of Modesty Barbara Goldman Carrel, The City University of New York Hasidic Women s Fashion Aesthetic and Practice: The long and short of tzniuth Discussion Lunch Session Chair: Iain Scobie, Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law, SOAS Jane Cameron, London College of Fashion Modest Motivations: Religious and secular contestation in the fashion field Daniel Miller, UCL How Blue Jeans Became Modest Discussion Coffee Session Chair: Professor Linda Woodhead, AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme Director, Lancaster University Roundtable discussion: Designing and Marketing Modest Fashion Shellie Slade: Founder and Owner, ModBod, US Hana TajimaSimpson: Founder and Designer, Maysaa UK Reina Lewis: London College of Fashion Reception The symposium and discussion are being recorded and will be used for a podcast available later this year on the Religion and Society website. publications/podcasts/from_events REINAPROGRAMMEMASTER 2.indd 3

4 Abstracts Reina Lewis London College of Fashion Fashion Forward and Faithtastic! Online modest fashion and the development of women as religious interpreters and intermediaries This paper elaborates how the growing market for modest fashion online (often led by women entrepreneurs) and associated commentary in women s blogs, online magazines, and discussion fora have become a central mode for the mediation of modesty among and between religious communities and the secular world. The paper argues that it is not only how the pious body is dressed and comported (Mahmood 2005) that can be seen to create the pious disposition, but also how it is represented, disseminated, and discussed. Deterritorialised online shopping has fostered crossfaith consumption for companies from the three Abrahamic faiths, with brands adjusting their offering and their communications rendering corporate online presence part of a new internetbased fashion discourse about modesty. This paper positions women s online discourse about modesty as a distinctive strand in the emergence online of new forms of religious discourse seen generally to publicise forms of religious interpretation not usually given prominence and challenging existing hierarchies of religious knowledge. With online religious discourse often regarded as male, new internetbased fashion discourse about modesty is emerging as a predominant mode through which women are establishing themselves as religious interpreters and intermediaries. Distinctive variations have already emerged within the first cohort of early adopters, especially in relation to representations of the female body. The paper evaluates a range of approaches, from ultraorthodox Jewish brands who avoid the human form, to new Muslim companies and bloggers able presuming a fashionliterate viewer able to read their fashionforward visuals within a frame of modesty. Annelies Moors University of Amsterdam Mediating Muslim Modesty Online Researching Islamic fashion online, modesty is likely to be the most common term one encounters. The slogans webstores employ to brand themselves often include references to modesty. Yet the meaning of this term is far from unidimensional. On the contrary, this particular concept is polysemic, ambiguous and sometimes highly contested. It is not only through verbal debate, but also by means of visual imagery that claims to modesty are presented and particular publics are shaped. The visual imagery displayed may well stand in a tense relation to commonsense notions of modesty. In this contribution, I intend to untangle the investment of particular actors in modesty as a concept and sartorial practice and to investigate what kinds of work this term does. Emma Tarlo Goldsmiths, London Inter and IntraFaith Concepts of Modesty One of the accusations often levied against members of religious communities who assert their identity and faith through dress is that they seem to endorse, and to a large extent, encourage social segregation. In this context faith specific dress acts as a boundary marking mechanism which maintains the separation and assumed incommensurability of one faith community with another. It is within this context that this paper sets out to investigate to what extent the notion of modest fashion as promoted online is operating as a new meeting point for religiously oriented Jewish and Muslim women keen to assert their modesty, identity and faith through dress. It examines the different channels and forms of interfaith engagement enabled through the online marketing, discussion and transmission of fashions as modest. It asks what these moments of inter faith engagement tell us about the points of convergence between Muslim and Jewish ideas of modesty? To what extent are similarities in understandings of modesty recognised and encouraged? To what extent are feelings of sympathy and identification stimulated through the process of online interaction itself or through shared appreciation of particular products and tastes? Whilst the paper argues that the market for modest fashion online is acting as an important new arena for interfaith engagement which challenges stereotypes of closed and inward facing religious communities, it also suggests that faith bound preoccupations with the importance of maintaining visual distinctiveness serve to place limits on the potential of modest fashion to absorb and replace faith based fashion. This raises the question of whether the levels of contact made possible through modest fashion are likely to remain just that modest! Barbara Goldman Carrel, The City University of New York Hasidic Women s Fashion Aesthetic and Practice: The long and short of tzniuth Hasidic women s fashion displays abound in the dress of the women walking the streets of Brooklyn s Borough Park and in the storefronts of the neighborhood s main commercial thoroughfare. These fashion proclamations are echoed online by websites selling religious Jewish women s modest apparel. Hasidic women s dress has been dismissed in the scholarly literature as being cultural significant and/or distinctive and by the general public as being fashionable. However, and although it is true that Hasidic women do consume and promote massproduced readytowear fashion, their clothing practice does in fact produce, reinforce, and signify a distinctive female Hasidic aesthetic. Hasidic women s stylistic displays and culturally specific modes of clothing consumption assert their refusal of dominant American culture and pronounce their Hasidic religious and cultural identity. Fashion is alternately celebrated and reviled by the women of the Hasidic community. For the Hasidic woman, the tension between wanting to be fashionably dressed yet appropriately modest and markedly Hasidic is precisely what engenders their distinctive mode of fashion and clothing practice. This tension guides Hasidic women s aesthetic choices and serves as a constantly fluctuating symbolic solution in the face of the American fashion system s indecent merchandise. I will explore not only which massproduced elements of dominant Americanstyle fashion are preferred by Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jewish women, but also the ways in which these fashion elements are appropriated, both physically and ideologically, towards the construction of their own female Hasidic aesthetic distinction in opposition to the fashion displays of dominant American culture. A discourse of royalty is shown to promote the Hasidic woman s style distinction both on the streets and online. REINAPROGRAMMEMASTER 2.indd 4

5 Jane Cameron London College of Fashion Modest Motivations: Religious and secular contestation in the fashion field The internet has provided a medium through which women with the desire to dress fashionably yet compatible with their religious beliefs can freely express, discuss and debate fashion and ideas of modesty. This paper discusses the method of entering the virtual field as a nonparticipant observer and highlights the discourses taking place within fora and modest fashion blogs that expose divergences in perceived communal ideas linking modesty, dress and religion. In various Christian fora participants share their understanding of modesty as it is manifested in dress and discuss their reasons for dressing modestly. A number of individuals explicitly state that because they are Christian they and the wider Christian community have a duty to dress modestly and should adhere to guidelines governing how much of the body should be covered. At the same time others, while identifying themselves as Christian, contest that modest dress for them is not a Christian or religious matter. Issues of practicality, body image and management are given as reasons for choosing to dress modestly and how modestly one dresses. The ensuing debates draw attention to issues relating to individual and community regulation and representation, and what actually constitutes modest dress. This paper asks to what extent is modest fashion as a topic of debate and a trend marketed online considered the preserve of the religious by those both within and out with religious spheres? What questions are raised when an ideology or concept such as modest fashion is discussed or studied in terms of being religious or secular? Daniel Miller UCL How Blue Jeans Became Modest Roundtable Discussion: Designing and Marketing Modest Fashion Chair Linda Woodhead: AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme Director, Lancaster University Shellie Slade: Founder and Owner, ModBod, US Hana TajimaSimpson: Founder and Designer, Maysaa UK Reina Lewis: London College of Fashion To round up the day, this panel discussion brings designers and entrepreneurs together with researchers to explore the current state of the modest fashion market and to explain why researchers are so interested in it. Sharing the stories of why they started their companies and discussing the challenges and opportunities they have faced, Shellie Slade of American brand ModBod and Hana TajimaSimpson of UK company Maysaa will discuss the particular demands of designing for modesty. Keen to expand their market beyond members of their own faith communities, both designers, one Christian, one Muslim, reflect on the overlaps and distinctions between different groups of modest dressers in terms of faith, location, age, and style. With attention in the UK mostly focused on the highly visible development of Muslim modest fashions, Reina Lewis will suggest why it is important to look not only at the modest fashion practices of different religions, but also to include the selfpresentation modes of those women who may not define as religious but who do wish to dress modestly. What would be the impact on the fashion industry if modesty were to be included as a regular factor in design, manufacture and marketing, and what would be the effect on religious institutions if trends in modest fashion were validated as forms of religious expression? Religion and Society Programme Director Linda Woodhead will consider the issued raised by including modest dressing, design, and the market in the research and education agenda before opening the discussion for questions and contributions from the audience. Blue Jeans represent a paradox with respect to the project on modest fashion. On the one hand there are many examples of religious organisations such as ultra orthodox Jews banning blue denim as immodest, and yet I will argue they have today a greater capacity for modesty in the sense of selfeffacement than any other garment in the world. As such they draw attention to two very different meanings of the word modesty. One concerns the exposure of the female body and the other concerns invisibility. In this case the two meanings may actually contradict each other. The capacity for modesty that I am concerned with is not intrinsic to blue jeans, it can only be understood by looking at the way blue jeans have changed in their meaning and significance over the last twenty years. I will argue on the basis of a recent ethnography that in London today they have developed this unique capacity for modesty and try and explain both how and why this is the case. REINAPROGRAMMEMASTER 2.indd 5

6 Speakers Biographies Reina Lewis is Artscom Centenary Professor of Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. She is author of Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem, London: IB Tauris, New York, Rutgers (2004), and Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation, Routledge (1996). She is editor,with Nancy Micklewright, of Gender, Modernity and Liberty: Middle Eastern and Western Women s Writings: A Critical Reader, IB Tauris (2006), with Sara Mills, of Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, Edinburgh University Press (2003), and, with Peter Horne, of Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Visual Cultures, Routledge (1996). Reina Lewis is also series editor with Teresa Heffernan of the book series Cultures in Dialogue (Gorgias Press 2007), which brings back into print critical editions of travel writing, memoir and autobiography by Ottoman and Western women travellers and writers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reina is Principal Investigator on the project Modest Dressing: faithbased fashion and internet retail funded by the AHRC and ESRC as part of the Religion and Society Programme. Annelies Moors is an anthropologist and professor of contemporary Muslim societies at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Amsterdam, where she directs a research programme on Muslim Cultural Politics. She is also the primary investigator of an international NORFACE research programme on The emergence of Islamic fashion in Europe, and of a NWO Cultural Dynamics programme on Islamic cultural practices and performances: New youth cultures in Europe. She has published widely on gender, nation and religion in fields such as Muslim family law, wearing gold, the visual media (postcards of Palestine), migrant domestic labor, and fashionable and not so fashionable styles of Islamic dress. Emma Tarlo is a Reader in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has a long term research interest in the anthropology of dress, material culture and urban life in India and Britain. She is author of Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (Hurst 1996, awarded Coomaraswamy Prize 1998) and Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in Delhi (Hurst 2003). With Annelies Moors, she coedited a special double issue of the journal, Fashion Theory on Muslim Fashions around the world (2007) and is currently coediting a comparative volume on the spread and significance of Islamic fashion in Europe. Her own research on recent transformations in Muslim dress practices in Britain was published last year in a volume entitled Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith (Berg 2010). Barbara Goldman Carrel is Adjunct Associate Professor at the City University of New York. She received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Anthropology from New York University, and an MLS in Library Science from Drexel University. Her research on Hasidic women s dress focuses on how women of the Hasidic community negotiate between fashion and modesty. Bridging scholarly investigations of fashion, ethnic dress, and consumption she attempts to reveal that culturally specific significations and clothing practices may indeed be found in Hasidic women s dress code and consumption of massproduced fashion. Hasidic women may be consumers of readytowear clothing but their selection and appropriation (both physically and ideologically) of specific items from the American fashion system promotes particularly Hasidic ethnic, religious and cultural principles, distinctions, and identity. Jane Cameron is a researcher at the London College of Fashion. She has research interests in the role of material culture in the study of religion and the use of visual methodologies. Her recent PhD work has been on visual articulations and constructions of Buddhist identity within Dalit communities in India. Daniel Miller is Professor of Material Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. Recent books include Tales From Facebook (2011). Stuff (2010) and the Comfort of Things (2008). Contributions to the study of clothing include Global Denim (2011) edited with Sophie Woodward. Clothing as Material Culture (2005) edited with Suzanne Küchler, and The Sari (2003) written with Mukulika Banerjee. Linda Woodhead is Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University (Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion), and Director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme. She has written extensively on religion and change in contemporary Western societies. Shellie Slade is founder of ModBod and sister brand Blend. Founded in 2004, and based in Springville, Utah, Modbods range of modest apparel and accessories sells online and through direct marketing and is also retailed in selected stores across America, including Costco, Nordstroms and Walmart. Hana TajimaSimpson launched Maysaa in Born to a Japanese father and English mother Hana describes herself as a Muslim convert. Prior to setting up Maysaa Hana blogged at StyleCovered (from 2008) which she still maintains, along with the company s Maysaa blog and magazine. REINAPROGRAMMEMASTER 2.indd 6

7 Graduate School and Research The Graduate School at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London attracts selfmotivated people who seek the dual challenge of independent study and close collaboration and find that exposure to the views of others widens their perspective, enriches the learning experience and accelerates creative development. Our courses cover the breadth of the industry and range from Graduate Diploma s to Masters Degrees. Research at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London thrives within our unique specialist environment and is supported and resourced by dedicated research facilities such as its worldclass Library and Archive. Research students are able to study to MPhil and PhD level by pursuing an indepth research project in an individually defined subject area. The research community at London College of Fashion is made up of a number of research hubs and centres: Centre for Fashion Science The Centre for Fashion Science research hub aims to develop new fashionrelated products and processes connecting connections between new and old technologies, craft and industry, science, design, art and technology. Fashion Media and Imagery Research Hub The Fashion Media and Imagery research hub explores the fields of communications, journalism, photography, digital media and cultural theory and its work focuses on comparative fashion studies, consumption studies, gender studies and the politics and sociology of fashion. Historical and Cultural Studies Research Hub Themes covered by the Historical and Cultural Studies research hub include fashion, gender, faith, ethnicity, oral history and urban geography. Artefact Performance and Curation Research Hub The Artefact Performance and Curation research hub challenges the ethical, social, political and environmental impact of fashion arising out of a study of the body and its diverse modes of communication. Pedagogic Research Hub The Pedagogic Research hub specialises in researching fashion education to support and enhance the delivery of teaching and learning. Key areas of interest include providing a framework to support collaborative projects. Forum for Drawing Nurturing a broad interpretation of drawing from paper to digital through series of presentations by researchers and research students for whom drawing plays an important but not always central role in their practice or research. Management and Marketing Research Hub Clothing manufacture and retailing are major contributors to national economies throughout the world; understanding and affecting change through research has become a concern for participating businesses and governments. This research hub develops and consolidates activities of researchers addressing the consumption and business improvement of fashion design and its retailing. Centre for Sustainable Fashion Connecting research, education and business to support, inspire and create innovative approaches to fashion. The Centre for Sustainable Fashion provokes, challenges and questions the fashion status quo. Collaboration enables the design of transforming solutions that can balance ecology, society and culture. Digital Fashion Studio Through Digital Fashion and the bureau service, students companies are able to access the technology necessary to achieve the competitive advantage essential for profitable business success. Technologies available include: Digital Textile Print Colour Management Rapid Prototyping Body Scanning Foot Scanning CAD/CAM 3D and haptic design software studio.htm This symposium is part of the AHRC/ ESRC Religion and Society research project Modest Dressing: Faithbased fashion and internet retail. REINAPROGRAMMEMASTER 2.indd 7

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