Perhaps it is just me, but recently I seem to have run across a good number of stories about religiously-inclined or conservative women promoting “modest fashions” with new businesses and websites. Of course, this has happened before, but there seems to be something different going on this time.
I noticed this recent manifestation when reading an article in the daily newspaper, The Times of Israel, which observed that of the many style websites and Jewish websites “Fabologieis unique in being a lifestyle website that blends chic Jewish living with high fashion.”
The article discusses the company, Fabologie, and its founder, Adi Heyman and describes her as being “as unashamed to flaunt long hemlines and sleeves as she is to post missives linking trends to the weekly Torah portion.” A recent story (and video) on Refinery29.com is entitled “Meet Brooklyn's Hasidic Hipsters” and discusses two Hasidic clothes designers living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Not surprisingly, some of their best customers are Muslim women.
While looking around the Fabologie site, I found this article, “Seize the Dough,” that addresses baking my favorite bread, challah. Apparently, an international challah-baking event took place in late October to bring Jews together religiously and culturally. The interesting development here is how this appears to be another instance of how the Internet allows communities to develop quickly and host world-wide events at relatively little cost. (See the theory of the Internet and the “long tail.”)
In 2013 down in Louisiana, Sadie Robertson, a teenage grand-daughter of Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the TV show Duck Dynasty, set out to create a line of dresses to be marketed mostly to teenagers wishing to dress conservatively but fashionably. Robertson teamed up with highly-regarded designer Sherri Hill to produce her dress line called “Live Original.”
So, why shouldn’t Christians in the South and orthodox Jews in Brooklyn be able to get together to escape the tyranny of fashion mandates they find morally unacceptable? Given the huge populations of religious women who would value this market, it is surprising this hasn’t happened more quickly. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we hear about collaboration along these lines, fashion shows in NY (Brooklyn, of course), and televised awards shows from Nashville and Tel Aviv. Why not?
