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U.S. Modest Fashion Industry : = Critical Interpretations of Brand Positioning and Muslim Women Entrepreneurs.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	U.S. Modest Fashion Industry :/
Reminder of title:	Critical Interpretations of Brand Positioning and Muslim Women Entrepreneurs.
Author:	Amalanathan, Shanti.
Description:	1 online resource (157 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-02, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-02A.
Subject:	Social sciences education. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798380158220

U.S. Modest Fashion Industry : = Critical Interpretations of Brand Positioning and Muslim Women Entrepreneurs.
Amalanathan, Shanti.

U.S. Modest Fashion Industry :Critical Interpretations of Brand Positioning and Muslim Women Entrepreneurs. - 1 online resource (157 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-02, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Iowa State University, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

Muslim modest fashion, or less revealing clothing worn to satisfy spiritual needs, is experiencing unprecedented growth in the fashion industry driven by young Muslim women worldwide. The demand for modest fashion in U.S. market is also rapidly growing, yet the Muslim community has long been marginalized by Western society and the mainstream fashion industry. This compelled me to analyze the niche modest fashion market in the United States that targets the Muslim woman consumer, which I covered in two separate manuscripts in this dissertation. I organized this dissertation into four chapters. In chapter one, I provided a general overview of my research, which centers the intersection of the growing modest fashion industry and the oppressive experiences of Muslim women in the United States. Chapter two comprises my first paper, Muslim women consumers: Critical interpretations of USA brands entangled with the fashion-advocacy-capitalistic facade, in which I critically and theoretically examined the brand websites and social media of 11-U.S modest fashion brands in the United States to understand how these brands targeted this growing modest fashion Muslim consumer market through their brand positioning. Applying the constant comparative method, I identified four themes: empowering Muslim women; reclaiming modesty as modern and beautiful; meeting fashionable modest wear demand; and rejecting and perpetuating colorism. Applying CDA (critical discourse analysis) I found that these brands emerged to meet the demand of young Muslim woman in the United States who are affirming their cultural identities through dress by wearing the hijab and modest clothing. Yet, their advocacy-centered messages operate within a profit-driven system, which I theorized as, a fashion-advocacy-capitalistic-facade. The fashion-advocacy-capitalist-facade concept helps explain the slippery slope that fashion brands navigate as they aim to empower Muslim women, offer trendy modest clothing, reject traditional Islamic dress codes for women and create space in the fashion market for this unmet demand in a capitalist-driven industry that is often plagued with significant injustices.In chapter two, my second paper, USA modest fashion entrepreneurs: Producing and distributing fashion for community building, centers the experiences of American Muslim women entrepreneurs launching and sustaining their modest fashion brands in the United States, particularly how their intersectional identities informed their business practices. In this research, I asked: (1) why did Muslim women entrepreneurs start their modest fashion brand? and (2) what are their experiences starting and sustaining their modest fashion brands and how does agency, intersectionality, and oppression intersect with these women's experiences? To answer the research questions, I drew upon the oral history and identified ten core themes: (1) creating space for Muslim women in the fashion system; (2) starting small and market expansion; (3) controlling owners; (4) much difficulty - experience, time, finance, and white supremacy; (5) successful strategies - occupying diverse digital spaces, pop-ups; (6) success strategies - centering the nuanced Muslim woman in product design, (7) successful strategies - centering the nuanced Muslim woman in marketing, (8) successful strategies - creating community for Muslim women; (9) consumer ambivalence towards the brand - love and criticism; and (10) environmental justice focus, too. Through a feminist perspective, I found how these women's intersectional identities informed their business practices and the successful strategies they employed to cater to the nuanced identities of Muslim women while overcoming their struggles of oppression from the mainstream fashion industry and business worlds. They started their brands to embody their cultural identities within the constraints of the capitalist market; yet paradoxically they launched individual capitalist-based enterprises rooted in Muslim feminist philosophies, to provide space for negotiating multiple ways of what it means to be a Muslim woman in the Western world. Black feminist thought tenets of prioritizing self-definition and self-valuation defined what it meant for these women to take agency for fashionable modest aesthetics. Additionally, Kaiser et al.'s (1995) notions of style ambiguities helped explain how these entrepreneurs grappled with activist sentiments that are engrained in purchasing self-determining products for profit - a seemingly contradictory pair. Titton's (2015) notion of "fashionable personae," addressed how identities are self-narrative negotiations influenced by personal tastes, opinions, and a performative embodiment that are restricted in various ways, most importantly from expectations of the fashion system. As such I argued that the "fashionable personae" concept, along with the notions of ambiguity and self-determination influenced the construction of these women's experiences, what I termed the entrepreneurial fashion activist personae. These women took agency over their bodies and experiences to create space for themselves and other Muslim women, yet these spaces were complicated by influence from the capitalist system monstrosity. Lastly, I drew upon feminist commodity activism to explain how the Muslim women entrepreneurs engaged in the commodification of feminist activism through their modest fashion brands to empower Muslim women in the United States. For the entrepreneurial fashion activist personae, the f-words (e.g., fashion, freedom, feminism) represent new ways, that are certainly complicated and complex, of being and becoming to articulate authentic, personal identities through capitalism, entrepreneurship, consumption, and self-determination.In chapter four, I provided a general conclusion to my dissertation. I also offered a brief reflection in this chapter about what I learned from this dissertation process. Last, I have numerous appendices that include various parts of my research process.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798380158220Subjects--Topical Terms:

1179940
Social sciences education.
Subjects--Index Terms:

HijabIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

U.S. Modest Fashion Industry : = Critical Interpretations of Brand Positioning and Muslim Women Entrepreneurs.
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Chapter two comprises my first paper, Muslim women consumers: Critical interpretations of USA brands entangled with the fashion-advocacy-capitalistic facade, in which I critically and theoretically examined the brand websites and social media of 11-U.S modest fashion brands in the United States to understand how these brands targeted this growing modest fashion Muslim consumer market through their brand positioning. Applying the constant comparative method, I identified four themes: empowering Muslim women; reclaiming modesty as modern and beautiful; meeting fashionable modest wear demand; and rejecting and perpetuating colorism. Applying CDA (critical discourse analysis) I found that these brands emerged to meet the demand of young Muslim woman in the United States who are affirming their cultural identities through dress by wearing the hijab and modest clothing. Yet, their advocacy-centered messages operate within a profit-driven system, which I theorized as, a fashion-advocacy-capitalistic-facade. The fashion-advocacy-capitalist-facade concept helps explain the slippery slope that fashion brands navigate as they aim to empower Muslim women, offer trendy modest clothing, reject traditional Islamic dress codes for women and create space in the fashion market for this unmet demand in a capitalist-driven industry that is often plagued with significant injustices.In chapter two, my second paper, USA modest fashion entrepreneurs: Producing and distributing fashion for community building, centers the experiences of American Muslim women entrepreneurs launching and sustaining their modest fashion brands in the United States, particularly how their intersectional identities informed their business practices. In this research, I asked: (1) why did Muslim women entrepreneurs start their modest fashion brand? and (2) what are their experiences starting and sustaining their modest fashion brands and how does agency, intersectionality, and oppression intersect with these women's experiences? To answer the research questions, I drew upon the oral history and identified ten core themes: (1) creating space for Muslim women in the fashion system; (2) starting small and market expansion; (3) controlling owners; (4) much difficulty - experience, time, finance, and white supremacy; (5) successful strategies - occupying diverse digital spaces, pop-ups; (6) success strategies - centering the nuanced Muslim woman in product design, (7) successful strategies - centering the nuanced Muslim woman in marketing, (8) successful strategies - creating community for Muslim women; (9) consumer ambivalence towards the brand - love and criticism; and (10) environmental justice focus, too. Through a feminist perspective, I found how these women's intersectional identities informed their business practices and the successful strategies they employed to cater to the nuanced identities of Muslim women while overcoming their struggles of oppression from the mainstream fashion industry and business worlds. They started their brands to embody their cultural identities within the constraints of the capitalist market; yet paradoxically they launched individual capitalist-based enterprises rooted in Muslim feminist philosophies, to provide space for negotiating multiple ways of what it means to be a Muslim woman in the Western world. Black feminist thought tenets of prioritizing self-definition and self-valuation defined what it meant for these women to take agency for fashionable modest aesthetics. Additionally, Kaiser et al.'s (1995) notions of style ambiguities helped explain how these entrepreneurs grappled with activist sentiments that are engrained in purchasing self-determining products for profit - a seemingly contradictory pair. Titton's (2015) notion of "fashionable personae," addressed how identities are self-narrative negotiations influenced by personal tastes, opinions, and a performative embodiment that are restricted in various ways, most importantly from expectations of the fashion system. As such I argued that the "fashionable personae" concept, along with the notions of ambiguity and self-determination influenced the construction of these women's experiences, what I termed the entrepreneurial fashion activist personae. These women took agency over their bodies and experiences to create space for themselves and other Muslim women, yet these spaces were complicated by influence from the capitalist system monstrosity. Lastly, I drew upon feminist commodity activism to explain how the Muslim women entrepreneurs engaged in the commodification of feminist activism through their modest fashion brands to empower Muslim women in the United States. For the entrepreneurial fashion activist personae, the f-words (e.g., fashion, freedom, feminism) represent new ways, that are certainly complicated and complex, of being and becoming to articulate authentic, personal identities through capitalism, entrepreneurship, consumption, and self-determination.In chapter four, I provided a general conclusion to my dissertation. I also offered a brief reflection in this chapter about what I learned from this dissertation process. Last, I have numerous appendices that include various parts of my research process.
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