Modest dressing: faith based fashion and the internet retail

The last two decades has seen the development of a rapidly expanding and diversifying market for modest fashion, arising initially from and serving the needs of women from the three Abrahamic faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, who are motivated to dress modestly for religious reasons. This market is also sustained by women whose ‘look’ may share many elements of modest styling but who do not regard their processes of self-fashioning in terms of religion or modesty as such. For both groups the internet has been central to the rapid growth of the modest fashion sector, fostering the development of a niche market through e-commerce, and providing virtual platforms for debates on modesty and fashion on websites, blogs, and discussion groups (fora). Modest Dressing: Faith-based fashion and internet retail set out to explore the market for and the dialogues about modest dressing that were developing online, and their relationship to practices off-line. The project set out specifically to explore if and how e-commerce and commentary online were encouraging shopping and dialogue that went across boundaries of faith

Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures

In the shops of London’s Oxford Street, girls wear patterned scarves over their hair as they cluster around makeup counters. Alongside them, hip twenty-somethings style their head-wraps in high black topknots to match their black boot-cut trousers. Participating in the world of popular mainstream fashion—often thought to be the domain of the West—these young Muslim women are part of an emergent cross-faith transnational youth subculture of modest fashion. In treating hijab and other forms of modest clothing as fashion, Reina Lewis counters the overuse of images of veiled women as “evidence” in the prevalent suggestion that Muslims and Islam are incompatible with Western modernity. Muslim Fashion contextualizes modest wardrobe styling within Islamic and global consumer cultures, interviewing key players including designers, bloggers, shoppers, store clerks, and shop owners. Focusing on Britain, North America, and Turkey, Lewis provides insights into the ways young Muslim women use multiple fashion systems to negotiate religion, identity, and ethnicity

Modest Fashion in UK Women's Working Life:A report for employers, HR professionals, religious organisations, and policymakers

This report discusses the findings of a study on how religiously-related modest fashion and associated behaviours impact on women’s working lives – regardless of their own religious or secular background or beliefs. The investigation compares the experience and implementation of workplace modesty codes at UK faith-based organisations (FBOs) with the experience of women employed by UK and global secular employers whose work took them to Saudi Arabia (the UK’s biggest trading partner in the region) where they had to abide by Saudi regulations about women’s dress and behaviour

Modest Fashion in UK Women's Working Life:A report for fashion and the creative industries and creative arts education

This report discusses the findings of a study on how religiously-related modest fashion and associated behaviours impact on women’s working lives – regardless of their own religious or secular background or beliefs. The investigation compares the experience and implementation of workplace modesty codes at UK faith-based organisations (FBOs) with the experience of women employed by UK and global secular employers whose work took them to Saudi Arabia (the UK’s biggest trading partner in the region) where they had to abide by Saudi regulations about women’s dress and behaviour

Aesthetic Labor in Religious Contexts: Women Encountering Modest Dress in the Workplace in the UK and Saudi Arabia

This article explores how UK women encounter religious dress and behavior codes in religious work contexts. It compares two very different case studies: women working at faith-based organizations in the UK and women working for secular organizations who travel for work to Saudi Arabia. Using 65 semi-structured interviews, participant wardrobe photographs, and observation in regional modest fashion retail, the article analyzes women workers’ experience in religious contexts as a form of aesthetic labor. It investigates the gendered and religious components which structure women’s different responses to workplace modesty codes. Detailing the additional aesthetic and emotional labor demanded of women in crafting modest professional appearances in religious contexts, the research reveals continuities in how workplace modesty requirements impact on women’s occupational performance and sense of self. The conclusion argues that religion-related workplace modesty codes constitute a religiously-inflected form of organizational aesthetics that may operate simultaneously with, but be experienced differently from, secular-driven organizational aesthetics. We find that religious dress codes are arbitrated by the avoidance of shame, an affect accompanying the government of modesty for all involved. We find that organizations benefit from, but do not recognize or recompense, the additional aesthetic labor that modesty demands of women

Development of engineering design tools to help reduce apple bruising

A large percentage of apples are wasted each year due to damage such as bruising. The apple journey from orchard to supermarket is very complex and apples are subjected to a variety of static and dynamic loads that could result in this damage occurring. The main aim of this work was to carry out numerical modelling to develop a design tool that can be used to optimise the design of harvesting and sorting equipment and packaging media to reduce the likelihood of apple bruise formation resulting from impact loads. An experimental study, along with analytical calculations, varying apple drop heights and counterface material properties, were used to provide data to validate the numerical modelling. Good correlation was seen between the models and experiments and this approach combined with previous work on static modelling should provide a comprehensive design tool for reducing the likelihood of apple bruising occurring

Modest Dress at Work as Lived Religion: Women’s Dress in Religious Work Contexts in Saudi Arabia and the UK

This article explores how women in religious workplaces respond to organizational norms of and requirements for modest dress and behavior, both implicit and explicit. It compares two case studies: women working for faith-based organizations (FBOs) in the UK, and women working for secular organizations who travel for work to Saudi Arabia, where the state requirement to dress modesty meant wearing an abaya (slightly relaxed in 2019). Data come from semi-structured interviews with 43 women: 21 who travelled from the UK to Saudi Arabia and 22 who work in UK FBOs. It examines three themes: how women adapt to forms of modest dress, how they navigate dress regulation, and how they negotiate habitus and authenticity. The article proposes that women’s modest dress in workplaces governed by religious codes be understood as a form of lived religious practice and one that raises dilemmas of habitus and authenticity

Renal and neurological side effects of colistin in critically ill patients

Colistin is a complex polypeptide antibiotic composed mainly of colistin A and B. It was abandoned from clinical use in the 1970s because of significant renal and, to a lesser extent, neurological toxicity. Actually, colistin is increasingly put forward as salvage or even first-line treatment for severe multidrug-resistant, Gram-negative bacterial infections, particularly in the intensive care setting. We reviewed the most recent literature on colistin treatment, focusing on efficacy and toxicity issues. The method used for literature search was based on a PubMed retrieval using very precise criteria