Since a still-famous, superbly dressed theatre deity declared me unfit for a future in his theatre in 1991 because of my shabby wardrobe, things have never really worked out between me and fashion, although these days my wife guards me from making too big a mistake. Not a very good starting point for a report on a fashion exhibition in Schiedam, but come on. You don't have to be perfectly dressed to be able to say something about clothes, in all modesty.
In 2002 - because I was just new to the Utrechts Nieuwsblad editorial office and no one else felt like it - I wrote a piece about that year's new fashion collection. It was February, I noted that 9/11 had had a visible effect on the designs. That year, there was a striking amount of camouflage patterns for the men and even a burqa look for the women. The piece found eager reception in the regional daily GPD newspapers.
Capital letters
Now, almost 20 years later, Modest Fashion is a thingy. A billion-dollar thing too. Through Instagram and Pinterest, women from more religious societies can also grab their role as influencers, and so a more covering look became hot in fashion land. Major fashion houses are marketing clothes that originally seemed to be intended only for Muslim customers. These are now gaining popularity elsewhere too. So fashion has been given capital letters, and fashion leaders around the world are doing their best to reason away the rather restrictive meaning of the term 'fashionable'. 'Modest', thanks to them, no longer stands for 'modest', 'don't look at me', 'chaste' and 'I'm not there', but for almost the opposite.
At the opening of the impressive exhibition on 'Modest Fashion' at the Stedelijk Museum of Schiedam, director Deirdre Carasso argued that discomfort is part of the story the museum tells. How exactly can something that conceals stand for freedom? Rajae el Mouhandiz, the actress who came up with the idea for the exhibition, explains that the whole idea of Modest Fashion is precisely that women do not submit to a fashion image imposed by the outside world, read: men. She also refers to the #metoo movement: why do women always have to be objects of lust and is fashion geared towards that?
Patriarchate
That makes it all quite difficult to think about. Doesn't this view of fashion fashion then suggest that women who don't dress and behave in a 'fashionable' way are doing it #metoo-behaviour of men right? After all, even today there are countries where perpetrators of rape are acquitted because the victim wore tight jeans. You could say that fashion is then precisely a great knee-jerk reaction to patriarchy.
The exhibition in Schiedam does not focus on those questions, but rather on the emancipating nature of a fashion movement that emphasises freedom of choice. Freedom of choice to wear covering clothes, not because men have to, but because as a woman you want to. Strikingly, fashionsty in Schiedam for pride and individualism, and there is even a neon artwork chanting the end of patriarchy right next to a monitor playing the impressive music video for Anouk's 'It's a new day'. Empowerment as a counterbalance to oppressive concealment.
Face
This was also reflected in the words of the mother of one of the exhibition's curators. In her opening speech, this woman, born in Morocco and raised in the Netherlands, enthusiastically explained that the focus on 'basic' fashion in her world actually helped to give women a face, a new identity.
Whether that applies to everyone, we have to decide for ourselves. The exhibition in Schiedam is a great starting point for that. Listen to the opening speeches here.
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