Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress

by Liz Bucar

Overview

Who says you can’t be pious and fashionable? Throughout the Muslim world, women have found creative ways of expressing their personality through the way they dress. Headscarves can be modest or bold, while brand-name clothing and accessories are part of a multimillion-dollar ready-to-wear industry that caters to pious fashion from head to toe. In this lively snapshot, Liz Bucar takes us to Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia and finds a dynamic world of fashion, faith, and style.

“Brings out both the sensuality and pleasure of sartorial experimentation.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“I defy anyone not to be beguiled by [Bucar’s] generous-hearted yet penetrating observation of pious fashion in Indonesia, Turkey and Iran… Bucar uses interviews with consumers, designers, retailers and journalists…to examine the presumptions that modest dressing can’t be fashionable, and fashion can’t be faithful.”
—Times Higher Education

“Bucar disabuses readers of any preconceived ideas that women who adhere to an aesthetic of modesty are unfashionable or frumpy.”
—Robin Givhan, Washington Post

“A smart, eye-opening guide to the creative sartorial practices of young Muslim women… Bucar’s lively narrative illuminates fashion choices, moral aspirations, and social struggles that will unsettle those who prefer to stereotype than inform themselves about women’s everyday lives in the fast-changing, diverse societies that constitute the Muslim world.”
—Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674982390
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/04/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	72
File size:	38 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and author of the prizewinning Pious Fashion. Professor of Religion at Northeastern University, she is a certified Kripalu yoga teacher and leads a popular study abroad program along the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

Table of Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Preface Introduction 1. Hijab in Tehran 2. Jilbab in Yogyakarta 3. Tesettür in Istanbul 4. Pious Fashion across Cultures Epilogue Notes Further Reading Acknowledgments Index

Editorial Reviews

[Bucar] argues in this fascinating read that pious fashion is much more than modest dress standards imposed on women. It is a way that Muslim women claim their identity and express their faith in a world that is rapidly westernizing.

WATER: Women's Alliance for Theology

★ 10/09/2017
At a time when Muslim women’s clothing is discussed in terms of freedom, oppression, and piety, Bucar (The Islamic Veil: A Beginner’s Guide), a philosophy and religion professor at Northeastern University, explains that modest clothing in Muslim cultures means much more than religious authority and social conformity. Having done extensive fieldwork in Iran, Indonesia, and Turkey, Bucar illustrates that pious fashion choices vary tremendously based on location and the specific mix of moral authority, consumption practices, and concepts of selfhood that exists in each context. For example, she notes, on the streets of Tehran, where women are legally required to wear clothing that conforms with certain guidelines, the loosely draped scarf style of headdress is common, and skull motifs and bright colors are fashionable; elaborately pinned styles and pastels are popular in Yogyakarta, where women’s dress is not legally regulated. Throughout, Bucar reveals an underexplored segment of the fashion industry and excellently exhibits the ways in which Muslim women engage with their faith and the world of fashion by choosing head coverings, clothing, and accessories that are both reverent and in vogue. Featuring street style photos of fashionable women, this book adds some much-needed frills to debates surrounding the hijab. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

The brilliance of Bucar’s book is that she goes beyond the hijab, showing how seamlessly (pun unintended) an entire outfit can carry multiple resonances, simultaneously revealing truths about piety, the body, gender, and politics. She shows how women’s sartorial choices within Islamic norms—and their interpretations of those choices—reflect and shape the values of a faith tradition, create spaces for agency and judgment, indicate or obscure economic status, secure or foreclose access to political power, and allow for individual expression…She blends history, anthropology, personal experience, interviews, and stunning photographs from fashion blogs to present a vivid cross-cultural picture of the complex relationship between clothing, faith, and beauty.

Christian Century - Elizabeth Palmer

A smart, eye-opening guide to the creative sartorial practices of young Muslim women who live in Tehran, Istanbul, and Yogyakarta. Bucar’s lively narrative illuminates fashion choices, moral aspirations, and social struggles that will unsettle those who prefer to stereotype rather than inform themselves about women’s everyday lives in the fast-changing, diverse, and historically specific societies that constitute the Muslim world.

Lila Abu-Lughod

Throughout this informative addition to literature about Muslim women, the author reminds her readers that hijab—as worn on the head or other parts of a woman’s body or called by another name—is open to limitless interpretations and is bound by meanings that are socially constructed and sufficiently fluid for further evolution.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion - Debra Majeed

[Bucar] argues in this fascinating read that pious fashion is much more than modest dress standards imposed on women. It is a way that Muslim women claim their identity and express their faith in a world that is rapidly westernizing.

WATER: Women’s Alliance for Theology

I defy anyone not to be beguiled by [Bucar's] generous-hearted yet penetrating observation of pious fashion in Indonesia, Turkey and Iran…Outlining how young Muslim women in Tehran, Yogyakarta and Istanbul shape urban cultures of modest dress, Bucar uses interviews with consumers, designers, retailers and journalists alongside ethnographic vignettes of outfits to examine the presumptions that modest dressing can’t be fashionable, and fashion can’t be faithful.

Times Higher Education - Reina Lewis

Islamic dress is in the news. Either as a symbol of female oppression or as a new, colorful statement on the global fashion stage, Islamic dress can be misunderstood because it seems singular and monolithic. This book offers first-person observations from the stores and streets of three cities in Muslim-majority countries. Through vivid descriptions of styles and shoppers, readers realize that Muslim women dress in as many varied ways as non-Muslim women do.

Carla Jones

It's thrilling to learn of the often extraordinarily complex meanings accompanying different varieties of dress…Truly an eye-opening book.

PopMatters - Megan Volpert

[A] persuasive case for taking fashion seriously in religious studies…An ethnographic project vast in scope as it introduces the diversity and complexity of pious fashion among Muslim women…Bucar’s expansive understanding of piety is helpful as she applies it to nationalism, cultural fidelity, religious sincerity, and class as the means and expertise to participate in aesthetic-making activities.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion - Jeanine Viau

Pious Fashion is a look at contemporary dress and how it can help us see the ‘Muslim community’ as a vast array of individuals rather than an inscrutable monolith… Bucar disabuses readers of any preconceived ideas that women who adhere to an aesthetic of modesty are unfashionable or frumpy.

Robin Givhan

[Bucar] comes across as warm, engaging and funny. The women she studies trust her and she has an eye for minute details: the book is packed with them, and this is where Bucar comes into her own. Amid the descriptions of fabrics, colors and styles, she really gets under the skin of how [Muslim] women like to dress…There are fascinating insights too.

Literary Review - Ramita Navai

In Pious Fashion Elizabeth Bucar adds her voice to a growing body of literature that seeks to move beyond simplistic and polemical arguments for or against ‘the veil’ towards an exploration of the complex and thriving world of Islamic fashion…[Pious Fashion] manages to be informative, ethnographically rich and highly readable, and to those unfamiliar with the topic, it provides an engaging introduction…[Bucar] brings out both the sensuality and pleasure of sartorial experimentation and also its politics.

Times Literary Supplement - Emma Tarlo

[Bucar] argues in this fascinating read that pious fashion is much more than modest dress standards imposed on women. It is a way that Muslim women claim their identity and express their faith in a world that is rapidly westernizing.

WATER: Women’s Alliance for Theology