What is Modest Fashion?
What is Modest Fashion?
'Modest Fashion' is a term popularised in the fashion industry in the early 2000s, to recognise a form of dressing where women wear clothes that reveal less skin. The reason for the existence of this fashion style is often defined as being in response to "faith, religion and/or personal expression and preference." This is a generalised definition which is appropriate and correct. But when asked who the market is for such clothes, fashion houses and stores often jump to the conclusion that modest clothes are simply for Muslim women.
Faith Traditions and Modest Dress
It is true that modest clothing is a feature of the Islamic faith. Within Islam, women wear clothes that cover the body leaving only the hands and feet visible. Approximately 30% of Muslim women around the world also wear what is known as a hijab (which generally translates to veil) over their hair. This practice is common to both traditional and modern practices of the faith. So it is true, modern Muslim women are a powerful market who have long called for clothing to suit their needs. There are also a small minority of Muslim women who cover their face and hands and feet in public, and these women also have specialised clothing requirements to make this form of dress work for them on a daily basis.
However, this emphasis on Muslim women as being the only group seeking modest clothing is wildly misplaced. There are many other groups of women who have long sought modest dress for a whole host of reasons. Even when keeping to the theme of religiously informed dress, there are many religions around the world that promote modest dress as part of women's spiritual expression.
Many orthodox Jewish women wear modest clothing exclusively, and also wear either a headscarf or a wig. This is because women often shave their hair from their head as part of their faith practice, and in turn do not enter a public forum without their head being covered. With this as a highly established religious tradition, there are also many women who do not shave their hair but still choose to wear modest dress and head coverings as part of their religious tradition and expression.
Hindu women have also long worn modest clothing in the form of long pants, long tops and a dupatta (long scarf). The dupatta is often worn over the shoulders in public and is quickly placed over the head for purposes of worship or when showing respect to certain people within the community (such as community elders). Sometimes, Hindu women will use their dupatta to cover their entire head, looking through the fabric as a light curtain.
More familiar to Westerners, is the Orthodox, Coptic and Catholic Christian traditions around modest dress, and the wearing a head scarves, particularly when in church. This is also a familiar tradition to anyone who has been to a Western wedding and has seen the tradition of the bride wearing a veil. But there are many women from these faith traditions and often from specific cultures where modest clothes are worn on a daily basis and head coverings are a major part of their faith practice.
Western Social Influences Promoting Modest Dress
Hence, modest dress always has been an element of major faiths around the world, and it is still widely practiced in many faiths and in many nations as a result of these faith traditions. But there is another social tradition that also pushes a great number of Western women towards modest dress. On the back of second wave feminism that influenced the Western world in the 1960s and 70s, women were finally given greater access to employment. For the first time, women gained access to professional jobs as well as roles in fields like management and corporate employment. For some, this meant the wearing of business suits, and from the 1970s, there was a massive move to produce women's business suits in the form of pants suits or skirt suits. However, many workplaces do not wish their employees to wear something as uniform as a business suit, but they do have contractual "Codes of Conduct" or explicit "Dress Standards" that employees must live up to. These include many professional jobs, such as teachers, doctors, librarians, workers for government institutions etc. Each workplace writes their own dress code, and so each one differs. But overall, these employment dress codes often push employees to wear clothing that covers skin and is not deemed too sexually revealing or too casual. As such, there has been a desperate need for modest clothing in the West since the 1970s, as a result of these employment requirements in many professions. Yet the fashion industry has done a terrible job of answering this call, and so women are often stuck trying to construct modest outfits out of general clothes and pieces of formal business suits.
We Need to Ask A New Question!
Yet, none of these faith traditions are new. And second wave feminism was a social movement from 50 years ago. This is a long time in fashion terms. So the important question becomes not "what is modest fashion" but rather "why is modest fashion becoming more popular?" There must be a reason more and more women are choosing to wear modest fashion. Rather than rejecting old social traditions, faith expectations and employer pressures, more and more women are embracing modest fashion as their standard form of dress, or a regular form of dress. So there is clearly something inherent to modest dress itself that is seeing it grow as a style, rather than shrinking due to its links to historical standards established by faiths, communities and employers.