Women’s fashion in Islam: A difficult way for self-expression?

Fashion is tremendously important, not only at an economic level that produces continuous work for millions of people but, also, to create your identity. It’s great how most women can express what we feel from the outside, interpret according to what we want to say without words and very sad that some women impose a daily uniform for religion, culture or education.

In a time where everyone wants to be the same, I proclaim the difference between men and women, of course, because we are different species and, even among the same species, we are all unique and the beautiful does not seem to be all the same, the beautiful thing is to be able to coexist being different: acceptance, love, respect, and the basis of everything: education.

We are not all equal but we all have the right to be who we want to be and the imposition of the burqa or niqab bound for women in Islam or the impersonal Amish wardrobe are proof that fashion also represents the evolution of cultures. It does not seem to me casual that an Amish if he breaks with some tradition of his people, has to leave them and break ties with all his friends and family or all the atrocities made by the radical Islamists already too well known.

Fashion also expresses the freedom of the person. Radical societies or closed communities that do not adapt as the examples just given tend to dress in a way imposed by the power because I think it is more about power than religion. There are cases like Islam that the greatest cruelty is borne by women in a completely psychotic way but in general, the woman always takes the worst part of these groups.

That’s why I laugh at neo-feminism in today’s Western society. It made a lot of sense from Hiparquía to the SXX, but now I believe that the woman in the Western world is where she wants to be, in an individual way she can get what she wants. We have power, different power than that of men but no less effective and I think we should focus on getting women who are not in our position what we have achieved more than complaining, the complaint is easy in the society in which we live with so much historical memory that some tend not to forget, we have evolved enormously in a very short time but things have changed so much that a new plan is needed, from today, from the present, which is really the only thing we have but to hang on to the past without thinking where we are now, it does not seem like a solution.

Coco Chanel said, “I did not like my life, so I created my life”. I think we can do that all for a long time and I, at least, prefer to act.

Talking about Coco Chanel is not just talking about one of the most influential designers of all times, she changed women through clothes like Paul Poiret did when he freed the woman from the corset.

Chanel made the pants fashionable, which scared many people, some because they believed that men would become weak and effeminate and others because of the woman’s fear of equality … but everything comes from much farther, the trousers were considered a pledge of barbarian for a long time but also some women dared to take them, like the Amazons who fought for not having a life of seclusion and monotony. In the year 400DC some Germanic peoples began to wear them for comfort dyeing and “decorating”, not until World War II women could take them but only to work for a comfort issue and finally, Coco Chanel made them fashionable forever.

Pretty much later, in the ’60s of the last century, an English designer named Mary Quant revolutionized fashion at a time already revolutionized with the miniskirt. The woman in the West was freeing herself and, as I told you before, fashion was with her. We have taken a long time but I think as Gabrielle that in our case is already in our hands as individuals, there is still much to be done about it but in other towns that we should help with our experience.

Even now we continue to evolve. We keep breaking with the social norms hitherto known. In Spain, for example, Palomo Spain invites us to see fashion with different eyes, fashion without gender and without local obligations, because men can not dress in skirts and dresses? Or because a woman can not go in a bathrobe to a gala. The limits in the West today are put on oneself.

What is truly sad are the things that evolve and turn back because we have all passed through evolution but certain characters by madness or power or as they say by religion end the freedom as happened in Iran is gloomy. It was a tremendously modern country, very advanced in culture, the kings of punk music, the girls wore the mini skirt of Mary Quant, could drive cars, assemble music groups and above all had freedom of expression. They went from being a fantastic and genuine civilization to being slaves of the evil oppressed by the capos of the Islamic Republic.

So “if you’re sad, wear more lipstick and attack”, but with awareness of where we are and where many others are. Because the massive problem we have today in the West is not inequality, it is the diseases of the soul, the sales of legal drugs and they are not what oppresses the Western world, we have lost the north, we have forgotten what is the nobility and the love of oneself, there has never been so much confusion, so much discouragement, we have never needed to flee so much from our emotions and that is what I mean with that we have to look for a new plan for us, not only in the political that seems more and more obvious each day, in the reason of being, in virtue of the human being. We also have to adapt to the technological revolution, to the quick and easy response and to the fiction of universal love, for example…

I think that’s where we have to relocate to help those castrated groups of their freedom. In those villages where women still suffer from ablation, silent and exploited victims, confined to humiliation and ignorance.

We are all in constant evolution, constantly learning. Even the universe is. These are major words because I do not know much, but I dare to say that we better adapt to climate change than fight against it because we are always on the move and we can not focus on curbing the inevitable, old age, evolution or climate change. Of course, we can improve to slow down certain things and surely some can slow down but our new plan has to be sensible with what man is today.

The luck that we Westerners have is that there are things that we have already gone through, so we have an old plan that other people can use and in my opinion, it is our moral duty to show it to them while we continue with our duties.

Fashion will continue to support the growth and freedoms of each culture but it needs a basis to act.