ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how style has been variously mobilized to address the requirements of Islamic modesty in Niger in ways that highlight the inseparability of faith and fashion. It examines the evolving place of the hijabi within an extensive, and occasionally fraught, moral aesthetics through which Nigérien women learn to articulate their sense of what femininity, piety, and elegance entails. The shift from wearing the lullu'bi to the hijabi is nevertheless significant for it exemplifies how religious reformers 'purify' Islam by ridding it of accretions and introducing practices supposedly aligned with the Qur'an and the hadith. The first hijabai to be worn by women in Dogondoutchi were locally manufactured. Supposedly modelled after Meccan fashions, they were made of brightly coloured cotton brocade and came with matching drawstring pants and a long-sleeved tunic. Earlier hijabi styles emblematized timeless rigor and economy – qualities reformist Muslim women ideally embodied through dress and deportment – and exemplified a kind of 'anti-fashion'.
