ABSTRACT
Following the rise of Islamic consumer culture in contemporary urban Indonesia, the booming Islamic fashion industry and Islamic fashion media are turning virtue into value by deploying the image of the pious feminine as a mode of inciting consumer desire, while disavowing accusations that this is simply capitalism with a religious surface. Based on research and interviews with the editorial staff of one Islamic fashion magazine, NooR, this chapter traces how the rise of an Islamic fashion industry and lifestyle media in Indonesia positions women in broader cultural debates about the relationship between devotion and consumption.
This chapter presents the emergence of the twin industries of the Islamic fashion media and Islamic fashion through the case of NooR magazine, an eight-year-old monthly magazine that is one of the most prestigious in an increasingly competitive fashion media market. It discusses the conditions that have made the magazine successful, and have made steering it a challenge, such as the broader cultural debate about image and desire, were in part created through the Islamic fashion media's promotion of Islamic consumption. The rise in public proclamations of piety in Indonesia came at a time in national and international history that made Islam an appealing social and political identity. The Asian Economic Crisis was a key factor in the environment that allowed for the Islamic fashion media to form. Indonesia holds a unique position in any transnational analysis of Islamic capitalism, because its strength in population never compensates for its weakness in global status in the Islamic world.
