A La Mode

After sifting through my impressions of week one in Cairo, I feel compelled to say something about the issue of clothing. As we all know by this point, Muslim women tend to prefer a more conservative style of dress than what we're used to in the West. It's worth noting, however, that the exact nature of this dress ranges hugely from country to country, and within each country varies still further according to social class. In Egypt, for example, an upper-class Cairo woman might wear a belted tunic of expensive, high-quality fabric over form-fitting jeans and tie the whole ensemble together with a matching scarf pinned somewhat loosely over her hair. A lower-class woman, by contrast, might hide her whole body under a dress of coarse, thick cloth and cover her head with a heavy scarf fastened just under her neck and draping past her waist. The most religious women here, as elsewhere in the Middle East, wear the niqab, the long black head-to-toe veil that allows only their eyes to remain visible.

Fashion is an important mode of self-determination here. Among religious conservatives, clothes serve as a visual marker of a spiritual commitment to a Godly life, one that renounces carnal desire and pledges strict devotion to the guidelines of Islam. For the Egyptian elite, clothes are a badge of financial status, linking them to the West and its attendant notions of privilege and prosperity. One could map the city of Cairo in terms of clothing, delineating frames of physical space by what people wear within them.

Although we may be tempted to think of some of these fashion choices as misguided or disparage the reasons behind them, the obsession with clothing is certainly not unique to the Muslim world. In the U.S., your clothes can instantaneously define you as cool or uncool, a hipster or a jock, a fashionista or a fashion victim, preppy or alternative, too fancy or not fancy enough. The wealth of terms that we use to describe our own fashion-based cultures and subcultures and sub-subcultures is surely a sign of our preoccupation with what we put on our bodies. A map of New York City according to clothing preferences would be at least as informative as a map of Cairo.

For the record: I've read in several reputable sources that baby-doll minidresses and bubble skirts are out this fall and clean lines, pencil skirts, and trapeze jackets are in. Anyone care to comment?