Modest fashion? Dress, body, and space: an ethnographic account of Muslim female stakeholders’ experiences in the modest fashion industry

This PhD is an interdisciplinary study that provides an in-depth ethnographic account of modest fashion’s promotional spaces where Muslim female stakeholders expand their career choices towards the corporate fields. The female stakeholders in this research promote modest fashion in systematic fashion events and exhibitions and on the virtual marketing platform Instagram. More specifically, this research focuses on how these Muslim women construct a multitude of cultural and political scenes in the spaces they weave within these branding platforms for their agency display. Significantly, this research offers fresh insights by drawing a holistic understanding of the developing branding techniques in multiples spaces where modest fashion is rapidly growing in the physical world and online leading to newness and a creative staging of fashion items.

This study applies a qualitative approach through ethnography to study the modest fashion culture of more than 150 research participants who have multiple roles within the fashion industry: including businesswomen, designers, bloggers, models, fashion students, and consumers. This multisite research is located in Britain: London, Leicester, and Birmingham, in Istanbul: Zorlu art Centre, and on the online: Instagram. Data is derived through the use of ‘ethnographic mosaic’ strategy (Blackman, 2010) by applying the multiple qualitative methods: observations, conversational interviews, and visual ethnography, in different locations where diverse voices are accessed from the fieldwork. The ethnographic data are analysed through a grounded theory approach while a semiotic analysis approach was adopted for interpreting Instagrammic visuals. The analysis generates a thick description of the contemporary shifts that created a space for agency and representation, and also brought new perspectives to theoretical concepts.

In terms of findings, this thesis explores how modest fashion produced multiple promotional spaces where the Muslim female stakeholders develop their careers towards global brands while weaving spaces for their agency. Through cultural events, modest fashion is creatively growing a global consumer culture resulting in traces of a global culture industry where physical shopping experiences are key (Lash and Lury, 2007). Amidst these changes, key findings show that Muslim female stakeholders are challenged by stereotypes, modesty shaming online, and by the intrusion of corporates in the modest fashion retail. Yet, Muslim stakeholders had the fashion capital to balance between struggles and representations through their creativity. The thesis concludes that modest fashion carries its stability and value as a vehicle for Muslim women’s spatial expressions, creativity, and career suggestive of a feminist ipractice in which they perform an empowering act in a branding space offering new insights to agency and being a female