Westernized 'easthetics': understanding surface, depth and individuality in contemporary modest wear: an ethnography on hijab wearers and designers in Britain
Building on original ethnographic work carried out in a cosmopolitan, multicultural British context, as well as on dialogical engagements with textile experts, artists and designers, this study prioritizes — in an attempt to fill a void in the existing literature — the analysis of privately-informed, emotional, spiritual, artistic, idiographic (versus public, political/ideological, or class-related) aspects of modest gear appropriation. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship, from anthropology, history and fashion studies to psychology and design theory, the project looks into the creative individuations and taste (in)formation mechanisms of contemporary modest wear, with a particular stress on the Islamic headscarf. In concrete terms, the focus falls on agency-driven, (micro)cultural and psycho-sartorial dynamics of hijab observance, and the ways these are enmeshed, in real life cases, within a socio-biographical tableau of a far more complex facture than has been generally acknowledged. I will evidence throughout how, alongside publicly-evident aspects, there can, indeed, exist an incredibly rich depth 'inside' a textile's surface. Above all, the nexus of relationships between (material) dress, as it is worn and/or created by a subject at a given point in time, and its (immaterial) projections into the person's imagination, memory, and value system — in other words, the idiographic, often self-enhancing experience resulting from its wearing or making — will be brought to the fore.
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