Modest dressing: faith based fashion and the internet retail

The last two decades has seen the development of a rapidly expanding and diversifying market for modest fashion, arising initially from and serving the needs of women from the three Abrahamic faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, who are motivated to dress modestly for religious reasons. This market is also sustained by women whose ‘look’ may share many elements of modest styling but who do not regard their processes of self-fashioning in terms of religion or modesty as such. For both groups the internet has been central to the rapid growth of the modest fashion sector, fostering the development of a niche market through e-commerce, and providing virtual platforms for debates on modesty and fashion on websites, blogs, and discussion groups (fora).

Modest Dressing: Faith-based fashion and internet retail set out to explore the market for and the dialogues about modest dressing that were developing online, and their relationship to practices off-line. The project set out specifically to explore if and how e-commerce and commentary online were encouraging shopping and dialogue that went across boundaries of faith.

Modest Fashion: Faith-based fashion and internet retail ran from March 2010 for one year under the auspices of the Religion and Society Programme funded by the British research councils, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Science Research Council. A second, further phase of the project was funded by the London College of Fashion in order to present the work to the widest possible audience with a conference, a media event, a book publication, and this project summary.

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