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imomusBerlin's a pretty tolerant town, but whenever I wear my white Moroccan robe (and the weather this week has been Moroccan in Berlin) I get the strangest reactions. Something doesn't compute. The wild looks you see here all tend to follow fairly rigid patterns. The industrial goths wear long black leather skirts, for instance, but you can always tell what tribe they're part of. But a white man dressed as a Muslim... what tribe is that? Whose side is he on? What's he playing at? Is this the start of some trend we'd have to call something like "Fashion Muslim"?
At the Turkish market on the Maybachufer in Kreuzberg yesterday I felt somewhat at home dressed as a "Fake Muslim", surrounded as I was by "real Muslims", mostly Turkish women with their heads covered. But Turkish men tend to dress in Western styles. One, sitting at a cafe, said "Salaam alaikum!" as I approached. It wasn't an entirely friendly Salaam, though, more of a quo vadis; the man gestured a confounded slap to his head as he spoke, as if to say "Oh no, now there are kaffir dressing up as Muslims. Fashion Muslims, that's all we need!"
What would it mean if non-Muslims started dressing like Muslims? Would it be an insult to real Muslims, or a tribute? I think it's almost inevitable that Muslim-inspired looks will be adopted by non-Muslims in the near future. It'll happen for a variety of reasons, some of them contradictory:
* Solidarity Dressing: Youth culture tends to take its lead from oppressed subcultures and underclasses, partly so that they can't easily be discriminated against. This is done to make the minority community less vulnerable, less visible. If we all look like Muslims, and the streets are filled with mock-Muslims and Fashion Muslims, it's more difficult for racists to single out real Muslims and attack them. This is a kind of reverse-assimilation: the majority culture assimilates to the minority culture for its protection. "Don't assimilate to our styles," we seem to tell the minority culture, "they—and we—aren't that great anyway. We love you just the way you are, and we're going to decrease tension between us and you by learning something from you rather than teaching you how to look, feel, see, speak and live like us."
* Compensation Dressing: While "Solidarity Dressing" is going on, there's a complementary process going on in the immigrant community: integration. Whereas the more traditional, conservative, radical or elderly members of the community might exaggerate their particularity, young 2nd generation immigrants are often wearing Western styles. This assimilation creates an anxiety amongst admirers of cultural difference: the anxiety that different styles, and diversity itself, might die out. So the kaffir takes it upon himself to dress with the difference the young 2nd generation immigrant has repudiated. A strange bond is struck between young liberals in the indigenous community and old conservatives in the immigrant community. The cause: their shared disdain for the dominant monoculture. The result: a kind of musical chairs in which we all change places and exchange styles. I dress like a Muslim, while a Muslim dresses as I might otherwise have done (New York sweatshirt, baseball cap, suit, whatever). The idea that some styles are right and others are wrong, or that one style might have "won" the race and another lost it, those are horrible ideas, aren't they? So let's blur stuff up.
* De-Criminalisation: Liberals from the dominant culture are appalled by the idea that certain dress-codes come to signify criminal behaviours. We've recently seen hooded tops in the UK being associated with black street crime, and backpacks with Islamist terrorism. Result: both hooded tops and backpacks have been, or are likely to be, generalised as fashion signifiers throughout the wider population, and their association with deviant immigrant subcultures accordingly erased. (Note that the ban on "hoodies" in certain UK shopping centres has recently been lifted, largely because the hoody has become a generalised fashion signifier and no longer denotes the criminality of a deviant underclass.) Although this generalisation of racially particularised styles has a liberal motive—the desire for cross-racial unity—it's also motivated by something less liberal: an anxiety about visible differences. In other words, a rejection of pluralism.
* The Glamour of Violence: Here we reach a muddying factor, a mixed motive. When the general population buys into a signifier like the hooded top, one motive is to de-criminalize the image of the garment, and therefore the image of the racial group it's associated with. But another motive is to buy into the very image of criminality — to look "well hard". This is done as self-protection (if I can pass as a criminal type, real criminals may leave me alone), but also as a kind of talismanic identification with the sexiness of violence itself.
* Double-Edged Sword: Visual identification with a delinquent underclass cuts both ways. In the 90s, for instance, the white football hooligan became a style avatar for British people. This diluted the dress code of a small band of violent skinhead fascists, but it also spread their values throughout a much wider population, albeit in super-mild versions. There's some kind of weird homeopathic thing going on here: in order to reduce our chances of meeting with real ultraviolence, we buy into the symbolism of ultraviolence. We make it friendly and familiar. Something similar is going on with Goth style's domestication of death. By making Death cute and friendly and familiar, we make it less terrifying. "Oh, Death, I know him," we seem to say, "I see him in the mirror every time I get dressed in my undertaker's clothes."
These were the thoughts going through my head as I performed my little Fashion Muslim Action in Kreuzberg yesterday, with only a short break for lunch in a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese but decorated with incredible (staged) authenticity, and a look around the utterly appropriate exhibition Moving On: Border Activism — Strategies for Anti-Racist Actions at the ever-radical NGBK Gallery on Oranienstrasse. This group show included one photo which rounded off my day's thoughts perfectly: a shot by Julika Rudelius of two white women with a darker-skinned child, standing outside a hypermarket, dressed in hijabs. Salaam Alaikum, Art Muslims!
At the Turkish market on the Maybachufer in Kreuzberg yesterday I felt somewhat at home dressed as a "Fake Muslim", surrounded as I was by "real Muslims", mostly Turkish women with their heads covered. But Turkish men tend to dress in Western styles. One, sitting at a cafe, said "Salaam alaikum!" as I approached. It wasn't an entirely friendly Salaam, though, more of a quo vadis; the man gestured a confounded slap to his head as he spoke, as if to say "Oh no, now there are kaffir dressing up as Muslims. Fashion Muslims, that's all we need!"
What would it mean if non-Muslims started dressing like Muslims? Would it be an insult to real Muslims, or a tribute? I think it's almost inevitable that Muslim-inspired looks will be adopted by non-Muslims in the near future. It'll happen for a variety of reasons, some of them contradictory:
* Solidarity Dressing: Youth culture tends to take its lead from oppressed subcultures and underclasses, partly so that they can't easily be discriminated against. This is done to make the minority community less vulnerable, less visible. If we all look like Muslims, and the streets are filled with mock-Muslims and Fashion Muslims, it's more difficult for racists to single out real Muslims and attack them. This is a kind of reverse-assimilation: the majority culture assimilates to the minority culture for its protection. "Don't assimilate to our styles," we seem to tell the minority culture, "they—and we—aren't that great anyway. We love you just the way you are, and we're going to decrease tension between us and you by learning something from you rather than teaching you how to look, feel, see, speak and live like us."
* Compensation Dressing: While "Solidarity Dressing" is going on, there's a complementary process going on in the immigrant community: integration. Whereas the more traditional, conservative, radical or elderly members of the community might exaggerate their particularity, young 2nd generation immigrants are often wearing Western styles. This assimilation creates an anxiety amongst admirers of cultural difference: the anxiety that different styles, and diversity itself, might die out. So the kaffir takes it upon himself to dress with the difference the young 2nd generation immigrant has repudiated. A strange bond is struck between young liberals in the indigenous community and old conservatives in the immigrant community. The cause: their shared disdain for the dominant monoculture. The result: a kind of musical chairs in which we all change places and exchange styles. I dress like a Muslim, while a Muslim dresses as I might otherwise have done (New York sweatshirt, baseball cap, suit, whatever). The idea that some styles are right and others are wrong, or that one style might have "won" the race and another lost it, those are horrible ideas, aren't they? So let's blur stuff up.
* De-Criminalisation: Liberals from the dominant culture are appalled by the idea that certain dress-codes come to signify criminal behaviours. We've recently seen hooded tops in the UK being associated with black street crime, and backpacks with Islamist terrorism. Result: both hooded tops and backpacks have been, or are likely to be, generalised as fashion signifiers throughout the wider population, and their association with deviant immigrant subcultures accordingly erased. (Note that the ban on "hoodies" in certain UK shopping centres has recently been lifted, largely because the hoody has become a generalised fashion signifier and no longer denotes the criminality of a deviant underclass.) Although this generalisation of racially particularised styles has a liberal motive—the desire for cross-racial unity—it's also motivated by something less liberal: an anxiety about visible differences. In other words, a rejection of pluralism.
* The Glamour of Violence: Here we reach a muddying factor, a mixed motive. When the general population buys into a signifier like the hooded top, one motive is to de-criminalize the image of the garment, and therefore the image of the racial group it's associated with. But another motive is to buy into the very image of criminality — to look "well hard". This is done as self-protection (if I can pass as a criminal type, real criminals may leave me alone), but also as a kind of talismanic identification with the sexiness of violence itself.
* Double-Edged Sword: Visual identification with a delinquent underclass cuts both ways. In the 90s, for instance, the white football hooligan became a style avatar for British people. This diluted the dress code of a small band of violent skinhead fascists, but it also spread their values throughout a much wider population, albeit in super-mild versions. There's some kind of weird homeopathic thing going on here: in order to reduce our chances of meeting with real ultraviolence, we buy into the symbolism of ultraviolence. We make it friendly and familiar. Something similar is going on with Goth style's domestication of death. By making Death cute and friendly and familiar, we make it less terrifying. "Oh, Death, I know him," we seem to say, "I see him in the mirror every time I get dressed in my undertaker's clothes."These were the thoughts going through my head as I performed my little Fashion Muslim Action in Kreuzberg yesterday, with only a short break for lunch in a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese but decorated with incredible (staged) authenticity, and a look around the utterly appropriate exhibition Moving On: Border Activism — Strategies for Anti-Racist Actions at the ever-radical NGBK Gallery on Oranienstrasse. This group show included one photo which rounded off my day's thoughts perfectly: a shot by Julika Rudelius of two white women with a darker-skinned child, standing outside a hypermarket, dressed in hijabs. Salaam Alaikum, Art Muslims!
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 07:53 pm (UTC)Off Topic: Interview w/the Mayor of New Orleans
Date: 2005-09-02 07:56 pm (UTC)http://www.zen41771.zen.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/WWL-AM%20Interview%20Nagin.mp3
Re: Off Topic: Interview w/the Mayor of New Orleans
Date: 2005-09-02 08:04 pm (UTC)Re: Off Topic: Interview w/the Mayor of New Orleans
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2005-09-02 11:00 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 08:46 pm (UTC)Last Androgyne Standing
From:Re: Last Androgyne Standing
From:Re: Last Androgyne Standing
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2005-09-02 10:58 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Last Androgyne Standing
From:(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 08:42 pm (UTC)PS. You still look like a gallery -hopping, trendy, blogging, art poser
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 09:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 09:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2005-09-05 08:40 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 09:08 pm (UTC)i like your posts.
good day.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 09:20 pm (UTC)PS. You still look like a gallery -hopping, trendy, blogging, art poser.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 09:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-09-02 09:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-09-02 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 10:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 12:06 am (UTC)In any other context, I would have, upon seeing his facial hair, categorised him not as "Muslim" but "hipster". Lose the garb, don some button badges and a trucker hat, and he could well have been at Bush Hall down the road, seeing an indie band.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-02 10:42 pm (UTC)And I am intrigued by the idea of solidarity fashion, but as for the US, I'm not sure what that would be. White people who wear clothing of the black gang or hispanic gang aesthetic are not a rarity, but they seem to be ostracized as much, if not more, than the people on which the style originated. Muslim clothing might be a fine choice for solidarity fashion, but the connotation of that style is very different in New York than in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Additionally, I like the shape and movement of that robe but I think that in America, memories of the battles of the civil rights movement are too strong (not to mention a still everpresent racial tension) to disassociate white hoods from the klan.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 12:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:......it impresses Foreign clients
Date: 2005-09-03 09:10 am (UTC)However, I began to realise that I actually hate clothes, much prefering to walk around without and this dress which drew much attention made me feel celebrial yet anonymous.
Re: ......it impresses Foreign clients
Date: 2005-09-03 10:03 am (UTC)Yes, I understand the thing about hating clothes, and also the thing about comfort. Robes are closer to nakedness than breeks and shirts and so on. You feel the skin of one leg against the other. The air flows around your body freely. Naked, of course, is better. Here in Berlin it's rather popular. Children are frequently naked in parks, and out by the lakes, adults too. I look forward to "naked cities". Sentos are a step towards them.
Re: ......it impresses Foreign clients
From:(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 10:13 am (UTC)What a friggin moron you are
Date: 2006-06-11 08:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 11:05 am (UTC)(And the loft dwellers buy those huge hideous canvas 'paintings' of Al Pacino in Scarface/Goodfellas/The Godfather)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 11:17 am (UTC)1. Buying into symbols of global power (eagle wings, Nike swoosh or other global brands, globes and other signifiers of "aggressive normality" and unity / monoculture.
2. Toxic refusal of same, ie skulls, jolly rogers, anarcho-protest symbolism. (Note that refusal of toxic monoculture sees itself as toxic, and aligns with death rather than life.)
3. Children's T shirts, with cute pink / Disney characters on them.
Needless to say, only the children's designs seemed sane to me.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2005-09-03 01:41 pm (UTC) - ExpandDon't get me wrong...
From:Re: Don't get me wrong...
From:Re: Don't get me wrong...
From:Re: Don't get me wrong...
From:Re: Don't get me wrong...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 11:34 am (UTC)Of course, it's important to remember that there are Muslims who look pretty much like you do in terms of the biological features humans presently imbue (infect?) with racial meaning. Not just European Muslims and converts but Muslims from the Middle East as well.
Hybrid Mind...
Date: 2005-09-03 11:47 am (UTC)I think cultural cross-dressing should be embraced with all the new possibilities of fusion fantastique that would bring- moroccans in japanese clothes, scottish expats in berlin in moroccan/sufi clothes, new yorkians in japanese clothes, everyone in wonderful mutations of everything there is-
have you heard about a (possibly slighly mad) swedish artist/musician called Thomas Di Leva? He has dressed in asian-inspired, long women's dresses for 25+ years now and is a bemusing/puzzling blend of full-on hippy lovechild and singer-songwriter...(sadly the songs are just mental waffle)
Leila, a young clothes designer here, is making Iranian clothes from traditional patterns but with "futuristic" cuts/shapes, she even lets the women in her parents village back in Iran weave all the fabrics, from the patterns she has been making here in Norway...
-Such a small world, so huge possibilities...
a bit McLuhanesque...
(re: "double-edged sword": yeah, i think certain groups who live in foreign countries tend to shape their self-identity around a somewhat idealising and nostalgic concept of their homeland, and hold on to traditions and cultural codes/customs/values as a kind of "protection" and strength against the degradation and skepticism with which they're often met, therefore it wouldn't be strange if some would perhaps feel a bit provoked or irritated if someone took their external symbols (clothes, symbols, etc) just to make a "fashion" out of it...But as people are people and will always be different, people will have different opinions about these things and i'm sure that if the "borrowing" is done with love and respect, it wouldn't be "theft" or seen as mocking in any way- as it perhaps would be done if someone only did it for profit or shallow marketing)
---- complex theme, this- like yer blog
saalam aleikum...
greetings, [[ the X ]]
http://aredreamselectric.blogspot.com/
Re: Hybrid Mind...
Date: 2005-09-03 12:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 01:03 pm (UTC)1997, Moscow. Wealthy district cafe. A big fat criminal-looking guy in black denim is seating on a table, surrounded by the black gadgets of then-wealth: mobile phone, packed borsetta, key-chain with a car alarm and, most unexpectedly, reading a thick black book. Puzzled, I sneak over my cup to see what is he reading. It's The Decline of Europe. I'm stunned. He's waiting for somebody. In few minutes enters a tall blue-eyed, red bearded guy, wearing blue jeans and white shirt, and with white turban. They greet each other and order coffee. I try to listen through the music what are they talking about. They're discussing the expansion of the Universe. Cut.
Thank you for your posts
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 04:18 pm (UTC)When I read the line: "Something doesn't compute. The wild looks you see here all tend to follow fairly rigid patterns. The industrial goths wear long black leather skirts, for instance, but you can always tell what tribe they're part of. " it reminded me of something I got into my my mind once: "What is alternative according to the alternative mass?". Is it all black clothes? Striped shirts? Black n white? What does it take?
Is it a parody of coths big black leatherjackets by wearing a dressing gown? What would peoples reaction be if I would show myself with a leathercap and a dressing gown? "Fashion morning racist"? Since a dressing gown almost make you look like you have one of them jackets the third reich generals(and above) used to wear.
Oh, and by the way, with the Nike headband and colourful scarf outfit, is it a joke on globalisation or a spit on the dressing style muslims have?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-03 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 02:38 am (UTC)Your life without history, without concept of sacred or profane is a cute concept for the art world. Real people who don't have the means to jump from country to country and laugh at the contingency of it all might not be so amused with your love of appropriating cultures ironically, or you love of swastikas. I know you can't worry about every single other person's offense, but why chase it out to trigger it? Where do you stop being a provacateur and start being a jerk?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 06:40 am (UTC)How on earth do you think Muslims got to countries like Germany and the UK? They came on planes. I was married to one, and I can tell you that her family flew back and forth between the UK and Bangladesh just as much as I fly back and forth between Europe and Asia.
Your life without history, without concept of sacred or profane is a cute concept for the art world.
The thing is, I believe that modern identity is all postmodern and synthetic. That applies to unsporting people wearing sportswear just as much as it does to economic migrants dressing in fundamentalist parodies of their own cultural heritage. Check out The Japanese are almost Japanese (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2005/02/07/) if you're interested in this idea, or read Postmodernism and Islam (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0415062934/qid=1125815976/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/002-3029880-1334421?v=glance&s=books) by Akbar S. Ahmed.
fashion muslim
Date: 2005-09-06 03:48 pm (UTC)actually, Turkish styles are kind of a halfway house--3 Mustaphas 3 & their fezdom spring to mind. i have a wonderful book called Ottoman Classical Poetry IIRC, & have tried to write ghazals using those conventions.
but it's food & music that matter to me most.
m.
fruit flesh and healthiness leaves latex skull mask on couch
Date: 2005-09-08 07:07 pm (UTC)how??
that same calendar has been on my wall for a year or two
you have effected much nutritious change in my
you are very nutritious.
the bamboo is longer and windy in my back yard
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 07:44 pm (UTC)Muslim clothing
Date: 2005-11-18 01:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-24 08:53 am (UTC)Yes.
Date: 2006-01-08 07:54 pm (UTC)Re: Yes.
From:Re: Yes.
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2006-01-09 11:34 pm (UTC) - ExpandYou're a hopeless idealist.
Date: 2006-01-08 07:53 pm (UTC)I do agree with you that as the Middle East continues to be all over the headlines, fashion will follow along. But not as some kind of political thing... fashion only cares about fashion. And more power to it... as long as nobody is forced to conform to it.