Building a New World Fashion: Islamic Dress in the Twenty First Centur

Akou, Heather Marie. (2007). Building a New “World Fashion”:
Islamic

Doctor
Heather Marie Akou is an associate professor at Indiana University in the
department of design studies and has written several books and articles
examining cultural aspects of clothing focusing on African and Islamic dress.
In this article she uses specific examples of current websites to challenge the
“common perception that there is only one world fashion system dominated by the
West”.Akou’s central argument is
that a current new framework based on both macro and micro-cultures allows
society to recognize that non-western fashion systems like Islamic dress has a
global reach.

Akou
challenges the socially created false dichotomy of “fashion versus ethnic
dress”, by insisting that recognition of multiple “world fashion” systems from
different macro-cultures like the West and Islamic societies instead have a
great deal of influence on a worldwide level. She uses a specific example of
Somali dress beginning from their own distinct style of clothing from the
1800’s and follows it through to when the Somali people adapted to a Western
style following the conclusion of World War II. Akou then examines how the
Somali people adapted to Islamic styles of dress in the 1970’s seeing it as
fashionably neutral, something that is distinct in that it is not the ethnic
dress for the Somalis. This specific example provided by Akou provided some
validity to her second central argument that ethnic dress and world fashion
“can exist at different levels of culture”.

The
second half of Akou’s paper validates her overall hypothesis that Islamic
fashion has managed to infiltrate the global world fashion system. She examines
how Muslims are using contemporary forms of communication like the Internet to
interact with one another in order to purchase Islamic fashions
internationally. Her examination of fifty-eight popular and easy to access websites,
found that nearly half of them are based in the United States, and “were
created to serve Muslims in non-Muslim areas”. She then provides statistics
that validate her argument for instance that following shopping in the Middle
East; the Internet is the next largest way of purchasing Islamic clothing and
accessories like the hijab. She concludes her paper by examining the influence
Islamic fashion has had on Western World Fashion and vise versa. She compares
similar fashion trends from both cultures by examining popular Western and
Islamic based online clothing sites for instance Old Navy and the Muslim
Clothing Store (her example), to prove that the two cultures influence each
other more then once perceived.

Dr.
Akou’s overall argument is well supported with countless contemporary examples
of how Islamic dress has perpetuated the international Islamic community. By
closely examining a multitude of not only Islamic based clothing websites but
also comparing them to Western based sites, Akou insists that no stone is left
unturned; however understanding the results of her research into the 58
websites may have been easier to understand if displayed in some sort of chart
form, instead of incorporating it into the middle of her paper. Akou then goes
on to look at Islamic dress in countries like Turkey, Australia, Canada,
America and a multitude of others, in order to examine the world wide reach the
sites have on the Islamic community. However Akou’s central argument based in
macro and micro-cultures of fashion is difficult to understand here; because
instead of attempting to provided support for her argument she spend numerous
pages attempting to discredit other studies that continue to draw a distinct
line between Islamic and Western based fashion. Overall Akou’s article by
involving the Internet provides new insight to an aspect of Islamic dress that
has never been examined, and therefore moves the study of international Islamic
dress forward for any researcher interested in further development of the research.