On Sunday 5th of October, at 4:30 pm I sat in a packed auditorium to attend a talk titled Modest Fashion in Modern Times. It was part of the Dubai Fashion Forward talk series. A talk bearing the same title had been held during the previous edition in April, and I was curious to see how that new buzz word ‘modesty’ was going to be portrayed this time round. The actual content of the talk is best summarized by this Huffington article.
During that conference I heard a number of things that made me cringe on my seat: one statement went: ‘we need a massive Arab Islamic fashion brand like Mango or Zara to promote islamic clothing’. I heard that modest fashion was ‘a huge market and an untapped business opportunity’. That ‘Dubai could play a role in promoting that’. I wondered what exactly it was that Dubai ought to promote. The abaya? The long black loose dress typically worn by women of the Gulf which has become all the rage over the past decade?
Having done my homework, I had two books on fashion in my purse: one was a paperback of the Sartorialist‘s pictures. I had marked a page that featured a Moroccan woman wearing her own clothes and a scarf. She reminded me that it is in Morocco that Henri Matisse drew inspiration for his beautiful exuberant paintings. I thought: she doesn’t need a swarovski embellished abaya, does she? She would actually look grotesque in one. I also had another book titled ‘Hijab Street Style’ which portrayed a rainbow-like array of Indonesian women wearing their head scarves, and I thought again: do they really want black embellished abayas?
I paused and also thought about women who are Muslim and opt against wearing the abaya or the hijab. I wore the abaya for four years when I lived in Saudi Arabia where it is mandatory. I don’t now, nor do I wear a scarf, unless it’s sunny or I’m having a bad hair day. What category would I then fall under? The immodest Muslim ?
I then came to the following questions: Is there a consensual fashion role model for all Muslim women? Should there be one? Should all Muslim women dress modestly? If so, what is an acceptable definition of modesty? Surely it must be contextual…When in Rome…If the abaya and hijab are a growing market segment and a great export opportunity from a business point of view, do they not come with a set of stereotypical values? Would the exceedingly elegant, stylish, opulent and exuberant Muslim women I know who don’t wear the hijab qualify as immodest or non-Muslim? Or, on the contrary, is the aim to make the hijab sexy and playful and allow women who choose to embrace it to express themselves creatively- should they want to? I carried out a little research and came across a couple of youtube videos that feature and further explore the topic of the Hijab & thought I’d leave those questions open to the discretion of readers. But If you ask me for my opinion, next time round I’d rather attend a talk called Modern Fashion in Modest times.
Photo by Rana Ossama, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license
Islamic fashion has seen a massive change in the past few years. The black long abaya you are talking about is hardly preferred by anybody these days.