I. Global Hijab

A. Turkey: Consumerist boom AND rise of religious involvement in education, social relations, and economic life

1. Islamic capitalism and neoliberalism
2. Neo-Ottomanist: nationalist, export products to co-religionists around the world

B. Overall: Post-9/11 rejection of negative stereotypes
C. Statement of independence, membership in global community

 

II. Marketing Tesettur in Turkey

A. Tesettur: long coat, scarf covering hair, neck, and shoulders
B. 1980s power dressing aesthetic
C. Green or Islamic capital movement

1. South and Southwest, conservative during Kemalist Republican People's Party leadership
2. Remittances from overseas Turks
3. Business = nationalistic and Islamic service, charity
4. Mustafa Karaduman, CEO of Tekbir Giyim (founded in 1982): clip 1; clip 2

D. Tekbir Giyim now has 90 shops, 50 franchises in Turkey and 300 international franchise arrangements, markets in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Bosnia
E. Armine focuses primarily on scarves, also has large overseas market
F. Tekbir educates consumers, Armine leaves definition of modesty up to consumers
G. Market diversification, distinction, upward mobility: religiosity versus taste

 

III. Hijab Biographies and Subcultures

A. Lewis: fashion in contexts in which modest dress is seen as individual choice
B. Young Muslim women use mainstream fashion "to communicate their ideas an d aspirations about modern Muslim identities to coreligionists and to majority non-Muslim observers alike" (3).
C. Razia's "coming out" hijab story

1. Describes her family as not very religious
2. Sudden decision to wear hijab
3. Difficult first day: mother, manager at Swarovski store, lots of fussing with pins
4. Razia rejects "convertible headscarf"

D. Hijab habitus, other's interpretations, and choice as marker of authenticity
E. "Wearing the whole thing" hijabis = da'wa (call, invitation); Razia = pluralist, mixing
F. Social, political, ethical, and aesthetic effects of dress choices
G. Subculture: "religiosity figures as one among other mutually constitutive terms of social differentiation alongside class, ethnicity, and gender; a subculture that defines itself in relation to and distinction from the social and cultural norms of both a dominant or mainstream (and often hostile) non-Muslim majority and parental cultures of religion and ethnicity that are themselves socially and politically minoritized; a subculture in which creative practices of bricolage appropriate and transform commodities from multiple intersecting fashion systems including mainstream, 'ethnic,' and new niche modest commercial cultures; and a subculture in which style and values transmit 'up' from daughters to mothers as well as across spatial divisions between neighborhoods and nations" (4).

1. Hebdige: subcultures as working class male resistance to dominant culture, including consumerism
2. Lewis: subcultures focus on community
3. Mass culture has become more differentiated, fluid
4. Mainstream and alternative constitute each other through neoliberal marketplace choices
5. Parents' ethnically defined religious identities --> children's transnational Muslim identity
6. Trickle up of hijab from daughters to mothers
7. Neoliberal, individualist, consumerist self-actualization
8. Hijabis create new Muslim habitus, but are differently legible
9. Subculture as "life project" (195)

H. "Young Muslims who want their style innovation and distinction to be recognized as fashion, but don't want to be co-opted or trivialized, must fight simultaneously against conservative Muslims who declare embellishment contraband and a fashion world that fails to see them as style consumers and tastemakers" (197).

 

IV. Modest Fashion Taste Work and Cultural Capital

A. High street retail fashion (H&M, Topshop, Zara)
B. Britain: greater legal right to religious expression

1. BUT: Claims of safety, visual expression, or appearance as part of product (ex: hair salons)
2. BUT: "Muslim penalty" (207): barriers to advancement

B. Retail workers

1. US: Abercrombie and Fitch
2. UK: Hijabi coolness: "the ability of hijabi shop staff to act as mannequins for the store's products and for modest fashion adds to their generic value as in-store style mediators" (236).
3. Modest fashion habitus: cultural capital, brand ambassador

C. Muslims as consumer citizens who generate retail profits: "With the international increase in hijab wearing as part of a fashion ensemble, the embodied aesthetic knowledge of cool young hijabis could become a form of desirable economic and cultural capital for brands wanting to break into newly discernible markets" (236).
D. Niqab perhaps is more challenging to incorporate into mainstream retail

 

V. Online Hijabi Style

A. Shift focus from men jihadists --> hijabi fashionistas
B. Internet = platform for women's voices about modesty and religious interpretation (240-1)
C. Commercial opportunities for women
D. Microfashion trends
E. Feminist assertion of multiple modesties
F. Da'wa obligation and tendencies of social media --> criticism and censure

1. Debate, criticism
2. Dina Tokio

 

VI. Pious Consumption in Indonesia

A. Lewis: Islamic dress and online modesty discussions construct everyday religion through engaging the commercial; fraught dynamics of interpretation
B. Indonesia: modest fashion as part of national economic development
C. Accusation: wearing Islamic dress = slave to fashion, inauthentic
D. Is commodified fashion antithetical to modesty and non-materialism?
E. Flexible: can dress according to circumstances
F. Consumer choice to be fashionable and pious
G. Anniesa Hasibuan

1. First Indonesian designer to show at New York Fashion Week
2. Fall/Winter 2017/2018 show

H. Adopting Muslim dress is a way of becoming more pious: the agency of hijab is transformative
I. Jones: Islamic consumption allows its participants to "use the authority of consumer choice and religion to produce religious subjectivities that in turn generate their own discourses about agency" (228).