Fashion-forward faith

I attended graduate school with Elizabeth Bucar, and I didn’t know her well but I’ve always remembered two things about her: she was a sharp thinker, and she dressed with flair. I’m no fashionista, so the fact that I can recall anything about a fellow student’s clothing 20 years later leads me to believe that the level of Bucar’s flair must have been extensive. (Then again, any such claim should be relativized by the fact that we studied at an institution that prides itself on being a place where students live “from the neck up.”)

Non-Muslims generally describe Muslim women’s clothing from the neck up as well. We tend to focus on the hijab and what it indicates about assimilation, Islam, and the relationships between men and women. 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.

Bucar analyzes the clothing worn by young Muslim women in Tehran, Iran; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; and Istanbul, Turkey. 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.