WLUML Exhibition: Dress codes & modes - women’s dress in some Muslim
countries and communities
13/01/2006: This
exhibition looks at the diversities and commonalities of women’s dress through
space and time, highlighting the influence of many forces – class, status,
region, work, religious interpretation, ethnicity, urban/rural, politics,
fashion, climate etc. (WLUML)
Dress codes are one of the crucial
elements which contribute to the construction of a ‘Muslim’ identity by both
local and international forces operating from within Muslim societies as well as
from outside Muslim contexts.
The exhibition celebrates both this
diversity and our historic as well as contemporary similarities. Comprised of 20
large printed panels focusing on women’s clothing in Muslim contexts generally,
and then in 7 specific countries and regions: Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Northern
Nigeria, South Asia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the exhibition uses 250 images
(paintings, drawings, photos), past and present, and over 85 quotations from a
rich variety of sources plus some explanatory original text.
Diversity and commonality through space and time We
briefly look at men’s dress and at clothes worn by women from communities other
than Muslim, in order to show continuity beyond gender and community/religious
divides. We see variety and uniformity across space and time, which highlight
the influence of the many forces which create dress – politics, class, status,
region, work, religious interpretation, ethnicity, urban/rural divides, fashion,
climate. We also see how people change or modify dress to suit new and different
situations and places.
Identity, morality and autonomy
Recording the changes in dress that have and continue to take place
within various Muslim contexts has a political meaning.
“The
different parts of the structure (of costume) are consciously manipulated to
assert and demarcate differences in status, identity and commitment (support or
protest) at the level of personal, national and international
relationships.”Costume and identity, Hilda Kuper, 1973
In the
current context, the spread of supposed ‘Islamic’ dress for women and
enforcement of such dress codes through law and/or the threats and actions of
self-appointed male ‘guardians of morality’ is well-documented. Indeed morality
and the control of autonomy is at the core of norms and values that influence
dress codes – as this Egyptian male advocate of women’s rights highlights as
early as 1899:
“Are men considered less able than women to control
themselves and resist their sexual impulse? … Preventing women from showing
themselves unveiled expresses men’s fears of losing control over their minds,
falling prey to fitna [chaos] whenever they are confronted with a non-veiled
woman. The implications of such an institution lead us to think that women are
believed to be better equipped in this respect than men.”The Liberation
of Women, Qasim Amin, 1899
International agendas and individual
agencies However, lesser known is the fact that particular styles of
‘Islamic’ dress being imposed and adopted often have no basis in the tradition
of the country and are being imported from other Muslim contexts to further
specific political ends. For example in Sudan (after the coup led by the
National Islamic Front in 1989), the “Islamic Dress Law” effectively banned the
traditional Sudanese women’s dress (“Toab”) in favour of ‘Islamic’ dress. The
Sudanese state successfully imposed this new outfit onto women civil servants by
prohibiting any woman dressed otherwise from entering government offices. The
new dress code was identical to the Iranian ‘model’ and, in fact, Iran financed
the mass production of these uniforms.
It is precisely the invocation of
“tradition” and “indigenous values” which blurs the fact that practices and
legislations supposed to be “Islamic” are in fact carefully crafted to fit the
agenda of conservative Muslim forces.
Where women do endorse particular
‘Muslim’ dress codes as a marker of identity and consciously choose to adopt
specific styles of dress in order to assert their own identity – religious or
otherwise – this is invariably based on a homogenous model of ‘Muslimness’.
Whether this reinforces conservative discourse or enables women to recapture the
discourse around Muslim women’s role continues to be a subject of debate.
The exhibition is designed for display at events and conferences. It
travels in 9 sturdy cases which contain the banner stands, clothes stands, some
clothing and lighting. These boxes weigh a total of 215kg. Normally, the
exhibitor will be responsible for travel costs and it is fully insured by WLUML.
However, we encourage you to contact us to discuss possible sources of
sponsorship to cover such travel costs.
If you would like to know more
about the exhibition or would like to display it, please contact wluml@wluml.org