New Exhibition Charts The Rise Of Contemporary Muslim Fashion
It’s always nice when something you’ve been hyping up forever makes its way into the mainstream.
It gives you the chance to gloat and say annoying stuff along the lines of “I knew it before it was cool” like the influential tastemaker that you are.
With modest fashion, we—and almost everyone reading this site—has been doing just that for, oh, we don’t know, a Very Long Time Indeed now.
We’ve looked at athleisure hijabs and Modest fashion festivals and Muslim models and Muslim modelling agencies and Boutique Muslim-owned brands and pretty much everything in between. We’ve also tracked modest fashion’s not-so-slow creep into the mainstream, with everyone from Nike to Debenhams hopping on the bandwagon.
On that note, we thought we’d tell you about a new exhibition that’s showcasing the rise of contemporary Muslim fashion in the world of, well, contemporary fashion.
The exhibit, handily titled Contemporary Muslim Fashions, is heading to Frankfurt’s Museum Angewandte Kunst having opened at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.
Along with examining fashion’s growing connection with major labels and mass culture, it also looks at an arguably more important element of modest dress; namely, that far from being a restrictive form of clothing, it serves as an expressive statement that has allowed Muslim women to convey their individualism in a bold, unapologetic way.
That shouldn’t come as much surprise to anyone who knows what the industry is worth. A sector that nets an estimated $44 billion annually doesn’t exactly scream ‘uniform’, ‘boring’ or ‘limiting’.
If you don’t currently have plans to fly to San Francisco or Frankfurt, don’t worry! The exhibition is also accompanied by a book of the same name. It features photography, essays and personal narratives exploring how Muslim women’s fashion is shaped at the intersection of local culture, faith and personal style.
“Fashion is at its best when it both adapts to the needs of society and reflects its social and political undercurrents,” curator Jill D’Alessandro told Newsweek. “It is in this transformative moment where we now find modest fashion.”
With millions of women constantly bringing so many elements to modest fashion, we can’t wait to see what styles the future will bring.
The Contemporary Muslim Fashions exhibition opens at Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt on 4 April 2019. For more information about the Contemporary Muslim Fashions book, click here.
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