Description:
Who says you can't be pious and fashionable? Throughout the Muslim world, women have found creative ways of expressing their personality through the way they dress. Headscarves can be modest or bold, while brand-name clothing and accessories are part of a multimillion-dollar ready-to-wear industry that caters to pious fashion from head to toe. In this lively snapshot, Liz Bucar takes us to Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia and finds a dynamic world of fashion, faith, and style.
"Brings out both the sensuality and pleasure of sartorial experimentation."--Times Literary Supplement "I defy anyone not to be beguiled by [Bucar's] generous-hearted yet penetrating observation of pious fashion in Indonesia, Turkey and Iran... Bucar uses interviews with consumers, designers, retailers and journalists...to examine the presumptions that modest dressing can't be fashionable, and fashion can't be faithful."
--Times Higher Education "Bucar disabuses readers of any preconceived ideas that women who adhere to an aesthetic of modesty are unfashionable or frumpy."
--Robin Givhan, Washington Post "A smart, eye-opening guide to the creative sartorial practices of young Muslim women... Bucar's lively narrative illuminates fashion choices, moral aspirations, and social struggles that will unsettle those who prefer to stereotype than inform themselves about women's everyday lives in the fast-changing, diverse societies that constitute the Muslim world."
--Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
Brief description: Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and author of the prizewinning Pious Fashion. Professor of Religion at Northeastern University, she is a certified Kripalu yoga teacher and leads a popular study abroad program along the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Review Quotes: [A] persuasive case for taking fashion seriously in religious studies...An ethnographic project vast in scope as it introduces the diversity and complexity of pious fashion among Muslim women...Bucar's expansive understanding of piety is helpful as she applies it to nationalism, cultural fidelity, religious sincerity, and class as the means and expertise to participate in aesthetic-making activities.--Jeanine Viau "Journal of the American Academy of Religion" (3/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)