Synopses & Reviews
Modest dressing, both secular and religious, is a growing trend across the world, yet so far it has been given little serious attention and is rarely seen as fashion.
Modest Fashion uniquely studies and addresses both the consumers and the producers of modest clothing. It examines the growing number of women who, for reasons of religion, faith or personal preference, decide to cover their bodies and dress in a way that satisfies their spiritual and stylistic requirements.
These are women who are making fashionable the art of dressing modestly. Scholars and journalists, fashion designers and bloggers explore the emergence of a niche market for modest fashion and examine how this operates across and between faiths, and in relation to 'secular' dressers.
About the Author
Reina Lewis is Artscom Centenary Professor of Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. Her books include Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem (Tauris, 2004) and Re-Fashioning Orientalism: New Trends in Muslim Style (2013). She is editor, with Nancy Mickelwright, of Gender, Modernity and Liberty: Middle Eastern and Western Women's Readings: a Critical Reader (Tauris, 2006). She is also Series Editor, with Elizabeth Wilson, of the Dress Cultures Series from I.B.Tauris.
Table of Contents
Preface * Introduction: Mediating Modesty * Faith-based fashion and the commercially fluid boundaries of confession * Fashion forward and faith-tastic! Online modest fashion and the development of women as religious interpreters and intermediaries * 'Discover the beauty of modesty': Islamic fashion online * Meeting through modesty: Jewish-Muslim encounters on the internet * Hasidic women's fashion aesthetic and practice: the long and short of tzniuth * Modesty without religion? Secularity, shopping and social status through appearance * Modest motivations: religious/secular contestation in the fashion field * The modesty of clothing and immodesty of religion * 'Can we discuss this?' * Manufacturing and Mediating Modesty: the industry and the press * Modesty regulators - punishing and rewarding women's appearances in mainstream media * Insider voices, changing practices: press and industry professionals speak *
Index