Upcycling

Today we had a symposium featuring people whose work appears in the exhibition "Fashion - Faith: Rituals and Conversations," including a panel for us members of the planning team. The symposium ranged widely, as the exhibition does, making a stimulating whole out of what had started as a grab-bag of piecemeal ideas and connections. We heard about young Muslim American influencers and their innovative takes on hijab, the vestments designed for the ordination of Episcopal bishops (including Gene Robinson), an erstwhile Tibetan Buddhist nun's art in body-hugging and inflatable latex, the extravagantly garbed figures of an invented religion called Abwoon Dominus...

Discussion ranged from testimonials to fashion designed by "people of faith" to a young religious studies scholar's insistence that "fashion is capitalism, religion is violence, that's just authentic!" A Japanese priest told us how, when he was doing monastic training, the robes made him feel he needed to get up at 5:30am rather than his preferred 2pm. An older Moroccan woman responded to the presentation of work on new stylish hijabs by reflecting that when she grew up, she envied the women in hijab their freedom not to have to do up their hair, etc.; these young women's freedom is being taken away! In indigenous designer challenged the fashion industry's obsession with "scaling up" but also the expectation that each designer set up their own shop - why not find someone already doing what you're interested in and joining them?

I'm sort of hoping this project continues. Not that this phase is finished yet - I'm offering a workshop called "Is fashion a religion" in ten days, assisted by students from "Theorizing Religion." I'll bring from today's discussions a renewed sense that standard understandings of dress in terms of "self-expression" and "being seen" may mischaracterize religious - but also putatively non-religious - forms of attire.