The latest issue – November 2013 – of Sultana’s Dream is available for reading. The editorial takes up the engaging and thought provoking ‘Faith Fashion and Fusion Exhibition’ currently on show at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum.
The Powerhouse publication, Faith, Fashion, Fusion; Muslim Women’s Style in Australia, profiles various designers, prominent individuals, and fashionistas from the previously little known Modest Fashion circles in Sydney.
Faith, Fashion, Fusion: Muslim Women’s Style in Australia
The new emphasis on individual expression through this emerging style is evident of an attempt to reclaim ‘the veil’ back in to the individual’s space, and away from the multi-cultural discourse that had co-opted it. Perhaps this new fashion trend could take us one step closer to reclaiming the woman’s body from the public space, no matter her faith, class, or ethnicity.
Faith, fashion, fusion: Muslim women’s style in Australia, edited by Glynis Jones, is available to order online at www.powerhousemuseum.com.
The Hijab – An Identity Statement.
in the Editorial, Haneefa Deen writes:
Earlier this year an overseas Arab women’s delegation visited Melbourne, heads held high and uncovered (see edition May 2013). Some of our visitors were puzzled. Why were some Australian Muslim ‘sisters’ wearing hijab? The ‘elephant in the room’ puzzled them and they wanted answers, for in their eyes it seemed totally unnecessary. Some of the Australian ‘hijabis’ were taken aback but gathered their wits and replied that many Muslim women living in diaspora countries like Australia choose to ‘cover’. They argued that the scarf was an identity statement that was obviously unnecessary in Muslim majority societies.
In A Matter from the Heart, well known Melbourne Muslim artist, Nur Shkembi writes on wearing the hijab:
I don’t think that wearing hijab makes you a more ‘authentic’ Muslim woman than a woman who doesn’t. By the way, these days my Mother (who is also now a wonderful grandmother) is more than happy to see my hijab come through the front door. I understand now that at the beginning she thought I was making an arrogant statement about my ‘superior’ spirituality; she thought that by wearing hijab I was being haughty and openly declaring to all and sundry that I was a more devout Muslim than other women who didn’t ‘cover’. Even today I sometimes think that women who don’t wear hijab are sometimes more judgmental towards women who do (the ‘hijabis’, as we’re called) rather than the reverse as is often implied
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