I have been researching Muslim women’s fashion since 2004. My comparative investigation has taken me to three locations: Tehran, Iran; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; and Istanbul, Turkey. While there have been studies of Muslim women’s clothing in many individual countries, there are few cross-cultural and transnational comparisons. As I undertook such a comparison over the next dozen years, I found surprise, pleasure, and delight in pious fashion. My conversations about modest clothing with women around the world also challenged those neat intellectual boxes to which I had grown overly accustomed in the United States.
Each of the three Muslim-majority, non-Arab countries where I conducted my ethnographic research has its own history of regulating women’s clothing through official dress codes. These regulations reflect the idea that women’s modest clothing is a sign of something else—whether a “bad” sign that Muslim women need saving or a “good” sign of the honor and moral health of an entire nation. For much of the last 100 years, battles over these signs have been instigated by male elites to further political agendas that have had little to do with improving the lives of actual women.
But there is an unintended consequence of making Muslim women and their clothing important symbols of the nation: Women and their dress are given prominent roles in constructing what modern citizenship means. So, even if modest dress resulted from attempts to politically control women, it has become a practice in which women can exercise political influence.
Pious fashion in Iran is highly regulated. Since shortly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women in the country have been legally required to wear hijab, or clothing that conforms with sharia. But because there is no clear definition of hijab in the penal code, women have some flexibility in deciding what to wear. The many styles of pious fashion—from the full-body covering of traditional chador to tailored short overcoats and headscarves—show that the modern Iranian woman might be willing to live by rules not of her own making, but she also demands the right to interpret those rules. Some styles are read as expressing allegiance to the current regime, whereas others are viewed as politically subversive. At White Wednesday protests, women wear white headscarves and publicly demonstrate against the dress code. This week, a few women went further, removing their headscarves altogether and waving them around on sticks for passersby to see.
On the surface, modesty in Tehran requires concealing the shape of a woman’s body, especially her waist, hips, and chest, as well as her hair. But pious fashion in this city also expresses a number of related values. For instance, because women’s dress is legally regulated, pious fashion exemplifies the wider cultural value put on stability and conformity. Other values displayed in hijab, however, serve to unsettle this stability and conformity. This is evident not only among women who let a significant amount of hair peek out from under a headscarf, but also in the bohemian look of some styles that reveal a more carefree and informal aesthetic value.
Consider the “Arab chador,” a flowing overcoat that became fashionable in Tehran around 2007. Unlike the traditional chador, it is meant to fall open and has billowy sleeves. One popular style among upper-class Tehrani youth is to wear an Arab chador with a very big headscarf. The Iranian authorities endorse this type of overcoat in part because it is long and loose, and in part because its name links it to the culture and geography of Islam. But the women I interviewed described the Arab chador as a “bohemian” form of dress, popular especially among “artist types.” More than just a breezy look, this style conveys a vision of public femininity that, despite the strict rules of the Islamic Republic, valorizes a free spirit and sense of ease in the face of authoritarian rule.
