Fashion, Shame and Pride: Constructing the Modest Fashion Industry in Three Faiths

Dress that is understood to be religiously defined is presumed to be the opposite of fashion, to be spatially and temporally apart from the fast changing individuating global trends that characterize modernity. It is also presumed that religious cultures that require or encourage versions of modest dressing and body management are motivated by shame. These presumptions are challenged by the development in the mid-2000s of a new niche market for modest fashion that crosses the three Abrahamic faiths and that works internationally. The potential cost-savings of e-commerce allows many niche markets to grow. The field of modest fashion online is characterized by a mixture of commerce and commentary with an active blogosphere and social media providing opportunities along with entrepreneurship for a women-led discourse about fashion, modesty, and the body. This chapter uses the framework of internet commerce and communications to de-exceptionalize religious clothing cultures and place them within the wider consideration of how shame impacts fashion as an embodied practice, repositioning shame as one among other considerations that factor into the current explosion of creativity in modest fashion.