First published: 13 November 2016
LCF’s Professor Reina Lewis takes Faith & Fashion to Princeton University, USA, to explore the pleasures and pitfalls of ‘modest’ fashion as community and commerce in a collaboration with altMuslimah.com and the Princeton Muslim Life Program.
As increasing number of women around the world choose to dress in ways that express their religious beliefs and cultures, fashion blogger Whitney Bauck (Unwrinkling.com), designers Mimi Hecht and Mushky Notik (mimumaxi.com), and founder of media company The Tempest Laila Alawa (thetempest.co) consider the potential of fashion to encourage female participation in social and political life.
In the week that Donald Trump won the American presidential election, rather than dismiss fashion as trivial, we explore how fashion can develop women as influencers; able to negotiate scrutiny from within their religious communities and challenge prejudice from without.
- Introduction: Sohaib N. Sultan, Imam and coordinator, Princeton Muslim Life Program, Reina Lewis, London College of Fashion, and Asma T. Uddin.
- Panel 1: Life phases, regulation, resistance Speaker: Whitney Bauck, unwrinkling.com, Moderator: Asma T. Uddin, altMuslimah.com
- Panel 2: Picturing modest fashion: creativity, careers, controversies Speaker: Laila Alawa, thetempest.co; Moderator: Reina Lewis, London College of Fashion.
- Panel 3: Commodifying identity: faith, gender, race, sexuality Speaker: Mimi Hecht and MushkyNotik, mimumaxi.com, Moderator: Reina Lewis, London College of Fashion.
- Panel 4: Concluding remarks and discussion, Laila Alawa, Whitney Bauck, Hassanah El-Yacoubi, Mimi Hecht, Reina Lewis, Mushky Notik, Sohaib N. Sultan and Asma T. Uddin.