Faith and Fashion: Christian Dress and Identity

Christian women in Western societies are criticized about their manner of dress. The criticisms and debates address issues of “modesty” and “appropriateness,” or a sense of “propriety.” The apparel that is being designed, presented on the secular runways, and subsequently marketed hardly caters to Christian female consumers. This study seeks to answer the question: How do Christian women select, evaluate, and consume so-called modest and/or appropriate clothing in different socio-cultural contexts, particularly for church and other formal occasions? The study focuses on what is considered modest and appropriate clothing for Christian women. The perspectives of 10 Christian women were investigated and evaluated in a qualitative manner. A review of the literature indicates that there are concerns and issues surrounding this topic. Essentially, the purpose of the present research was to investigate and provide insight into how Christian women are expected to dress in a Westernized society; to determine what constitutes modesty and appropriateness for this specific demographic segment; and to analyze the experiences of Christian women in the process of obtaining modest apparel.

Faith and Fashion: Christian Dress and Identity

Christian women in Western societies are criticized about their manner of dress. The criticisms and debates address issues of “modesty” and “appropriateness,” or a sense of “propriety.” The apparel that is being designed, presented on the secular runways, and subsequently marketed hardly caters to Christian female consumers. This study seeks to answer the question: How do Christian women select, evaluate, and consume so-called modest and/or appropriate clothing in different socio-cultural contexts, particularly for church and other formal occasions? The study focuses on what is considered modest and appropriate clothing for Christian women. The perspectives of 10 Christian women were investigated and evaluated in a qualitative manner. A review of the literature indicates that there are concerns and issues surrounding this topic. Essentially, the purpose of the present research was to investigate and provide insight into how Christian women are expected to dress in a Westernized society; to determine what constitutes modesty and appropriateness for this specific demographic segment; and to analyze the experiences of Christian women in the process of obtaining modest apparel.

Aesthetic Identity Development Among Trans Adolescents and Young Adults

Dress is used by transgender and nonbinary (TNB) individuals as a way to develop and maintain identity, whether to reinforce a binary gender code or disrupt social expectations. However, safety issues of living in a society where TNB persons are discriminated against, harassed, and assaulted, and where binary gender violations are met with resistance, creates tension between expression of authentic gender identity and navigation of social systems. A framework for creating an aesthetic identity based on dress and identity development scholarship was created and used to analyze responses from interviews with 90 TNB individuals located in the United States, Canada, and Ireland. Findings revealed the dialectic tension between performativity and safety. The framework explores aesthetic identity through concepts including sensory, cognitive, and emotional aspects of clothing; scaffolding and feedback; role making and role taking; and exploration and commitment. Limitations and future research are discussed.

Social Change, Dress and Identity

The article, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, studies the process of the disintegration of the traditional system of peasant costume in the 20th century in Hungary in the backdrop of its socio-historic context. There is a focused attention on the period during socialism from the late 1940s to the end of the Kádár era, also called Gulyás communism. In the examined period, the wearing and abandonment of folk costume in local peasant communities was primarily characteristic of women and an important part of women’s competence and decision-making. There was an age group that experienced the dichotomy of peasant heritage and the realities of socialist modernisation as a challenge in their own lifetime – which they considered a great watershed. The author interviewed both the last stewards of tradition who continued wearing costume for the rest of their lives and those who pioneered and implemented changes and abandoned peasant costume in favor of urban dress. The liminal period of change, the character and logic of the processes and motivations behind decision-making were still accessible in memory, and current dressing practices and the folklorism phenomena of the “afterlife” of costume could still be studied in real life. The study shows that costume was the focus point of women’s aspirations, attention, and life organization, and how the life paths of strong female personalities were articulated around clothing. It also reveals that there was a high level of self-awareness and strong emotional attachment in individual relationships to clothing in the rural context, similar to – or perhaps even exceeding – the fashion-conscious, individualized urban context. Examining the role of fashion, modernization, and individual decisions and attitudes in traditional clothing systems is an approach that bridges the mostly distinct study of folk costume and the problematics of dress and fashion history research.

Fashion and Faith: Islamic Dress and Identity in The Netherlands

This paper focuses on the relationship between clothing and identity—specifically, on Islamic dress as shaping the identity of Dutch Muslim women. How do these Dutch Muslim women shape their identity in a way that it is both Dutch and Muslim? Do they mix Dutch parameters in their Muslim identity, while at the same time intersplicing Islamic principles in their Dutch sense of self? This study is based on two ethnographies conducted in the city of Amsterdam, the first occurring from September to October 2009, and the second took place in August 2018, which combines insights taken from in-depth interviews with Dutch Muslim women and observations in gatherings from Quranic and Religious studies, social gatherings and one-time events, as well as observations in stores for Islamic fashion and museums in Amsterdam. This study takes as its theme clothing and identity, and how Islamic clothing can be mobilized by Dutch Muslim women in service of identity formation. The study takes place in a context, the Netherlands, where Islam is largely considered by the populous as a religion that is oppressive and discriminatory to women. This paper argues that in the context of being Dutch and Muslim, through choice of clothing, these women express their agency: their ability to choose and act in social action, thus pushing the limits of archetypal Dutch identity while simultaneously stretching the meaning of Islam to craft their own identity, one that is influenced by themes of immigration, belongingness, ethnicity, religious knowledge and gender.