Keywords

1 Introduction

On an afternoon in 2012 in Gandaria City Mall, a luxurious shopping center newly opened in South Jakarta, Indonesia, I sat at a café with a French-sounding name with three young college-age young women. They wore either 4-inch stilettos or platform shoes, and two of them donned turban-inspired veils in festive colors. Their attire ranged from a bohemian poncho, skinny-cut pants paired with a hip-length cardigan, to grey harem pants. Sat on the table was a Furla glitter candy bag, prized for around USD 198 at Macy’s and could only be bought abroad. At one moment, one of the girls reached over to her friend’s veil, correcting it as she saw her poncho slide, slightly revealing her neck. Their colorful clothing, combining Middle East-inspired style depicts a middle to upper-class “cosmopolitan outlook” (Beta 2014) representing the flourishing Muslim fashion in Indonesia in the early 2010s, which, among others, was popularized by the social media, blogs, Instagram, Twitter, and magazines such as Aquila Asia which introduced Muslim fashion from abroad to Indonesian readers. This vibrant Muslim fashion was also popularized by a group called Hijabers Community,1 which was founded by a group of young Muslim women in urban Jakarta and quickly established chapters in other big cities in the country such as Solo, Bandung, and Aceh. Each chapter had a group of organizers who diligently held social events, workshops on veiling and makeup, religious discussions, as well as entrepreneurial-themed seminars. Its followers engaged with the community for various reasons, starting from seeking inspiration on how to fashion the veil, to seeking empowerment and building self-esteem as young Muslim women (Novitasari 2014; Widjajanta et al. 2018). The rise of the Hijabers Community went alongside the rise of Muslim fashion brands of that era.

My respondents’ attire showed their creative take on global fashion. They used clothing as a medium for self-expression and adapting styles to their personalities. Their turban, ponchos, and harem pants, which at the time were not common in Indonesia, show engagement with styles from various corners of the world. The imported branded bag, attractive colors, and interesting styles mark a cosmopolitan look, that is creative, bold, and transcultural. In between pastries, pasta, and lemon tea, they shared how they came to don the hijab and their take on the current fashion of Indonesian women. They discussed a few figures of the Hijabers Community, who at that time, was known to put their OOTD (Outfit Of The Day) on display on their blog and Twitter, showcasing their attractive outfits and bags while trotting the city. Several of the group’s cofounders, such as Dian Pelangi and Jenahara, became well-known fashion designers. In her blog, dianrainbow.blogspot.com, Pelangi displayed her attire during her daily activities and travels, showing pictures of her “globe-trotting adventures” and building a representation of Indonesian Muslims as “travel savvy women” (Beta 2014).

I met my respondents in 2012 when donning the veil among youth in colorful style was an emerging trend in urban cities in Indonesia, one which Beta acutely explains as “putting obvious symbols of religiousness at the service of a decidedly cosmopolitan outlook” (Beta 2014, p. 386). In today’s Indonesia, Furla bags have become available in major malls in Jakarta for 3–10 million IDR per piece. Another important development in the current decades is the easing of boundaries between nations afforded by low-cost carriers or budget flights which developed rapidly in Indonesia and Southeast Asia began in 2005. This had led to what experts called “a boom of passenger growth-rate” in the period 2005–2012 (see Damuri and Anas 2005; Nuryakin et al. 2019). Travelling and fashion become two modes of lifestyle that are intertwined as fashion bloggers, such as Dian Pelangi, show their trips abroad and the clothing they wore on social media. With mainstream media outlets using social media posts as content, photos of fashion, and public figures trotting the globe reach the wide public. One news article shows Pelangi's attire during her trip to Europe, titling the piece “Dian Pelangi dan Foto-foto Inspirasi Hijab untuk Traveling ke Daerah Dingin” (“Dian Pelangi and Inspirational Photos for Hijab Styles to Travel to Cold Countries”) (Santoso 2016). While my respondents in 2012 could only buy Furla bags abroad and be familiar with non-Indonesian fashion bloggers to look for inspiration, expressions of religiosity through fashion and traveling today have become more accessible for the Indonesian middle-class.

This chapter views the transnational contexts that helped the rise of Indonesian modest fashion and examines how the promises of going global and ideas of travel supported the popularity of modest fashion. The cosmopolitan look of Indonesian modest fashion as displayed by the respondents in 2012 shows that the references to global spaces and the promises of going abroad and buying imported goods have supported the popularity of Indonesian modest fashion in the early 2010s. This chapter focuses on the modernist notion of travel, which communicates the promises of success and being able to “arrive” abroad. This chapter observes the success of Indonesian modest fashion as being propelled by what Caren Kaplan terms the “modernist myth of travel” (Kaplan 1996). It argues that the narrations about traveling have become a technology for the global capitalist industry that preys upon Indonesian Muslims as consumers.

2 Methods

Applying textual analysis, this chapter analyzes the depictions of and engagement between Indonesian modest fashion and New York City as a landscape to argue for the interplay between the spectacle of traveling and human right’s discourse of liberty as those that create the global capitalist pull for the modest fashion industry in Indonesia. I connect the rise of Muslim fashion or modest fashion in Indonesia and the transnational contexts that helped catalyze its success. By viewing the connection between Indonesian modest fashion and New York City catwalks, this chapter observes what Lowe (2015) calls “intimacies” between colonialism and capitalism, and between racism within the U.S and the U.S. imperialism abroad, as all rely upon “genealogies of liberty” to repress minorities both in the north and the global south.

This chapter analyzes advertisements, media coverage, and interviews about Indonesian modest fashion that were shown on New York catwalks. My findings are drawn from preliminary research conducted in 2012 when the Hijabers Community was recently established and colorful youthful style in veiling became part of Indonesian popular culture. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, we analyzed the connection between youth, Islam, and popular culture, as reflected in the emergence of a youthful and contemporary representation of religiosity, depicted through fashion and media. I then re-explore Indonesian modest fashion and its transnationality with American landscapes, specifically in New York City, through observing media reports about the participation of Indonesian modest fashion designers on the New York catwalks and the designers’ political statements as well as engagement with ideas of travel. For this discussion, I begin with the year 2015 when Indonesian modest fashion was displayed at Couture Fashion Week and end with 2018 when one of the designers conducted fraud through one of her businesses.

I begin with a textual analysis of ads and media while situating the engagement of Indonesian designers with New York catwalks within larger American politics towards Muslims. I then assess the interplay between the language of liberty with capitalism and modest fashion to understand how ideas and images of “arriving in America” and “traveling to America” are used to represent individual and communal liberty and success, which is necessary to create “modern subjects” out of minorities.2 This finding ultimately helps to analyze the ubiquity of ideas of travel among Indonesian Muslims. This chapter does not intend to undermine the success of modest fashion as a force in activism against Islamophobia, nor does it undermine the designers’ hard work to advocate for Muslims and local culture on the global stage. Rather it aims to look at the complex web of power behind these successes and scrutinizes how the idea of ‘freedom to travel’ serves as a technology for U.S. imperialism, strategically creating cross points between religiosity and materiality.

3 Modest Fashion and the Minority Identity

In 2019 alone, the global Muslim fashion market was valued at up to 327 billion dollars. In Indonesia, the Ministry of Industry pointed out that the export value of the Indonesian Muslim fashion industry reached USD 7.18 billion in 2017, making the country the third-largest Muslim fashion exporter, following Bangladesh (USD 22 billion) and Turkey (USD 14 billion) (Ridwan 2017). As Reina Lewis puts it, “Modest fashion and Muslim fashion are no longer on the periphery of the industry” (Singh 2016). The global market has embraced Muslim fashion, calling it ‘modest’ fashion, and it is now a global commodity to which governments and the business communities readily catered. The veil and modest fashion are so common that major global apparel brands such as H&M, Zara, Uniqlo, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, and Tommy Hilfiger have developed modest fashion within their lines, and Marks & Spencer developed a line of burkini swimwear in 2016 (Singh 2016).

In Indonesia, the baggy pants, long sleeve shirts, harem pants, and tunics are now staples in stores and no longer specifically bear a specific religious identity as models would display them with or without the veil. Uniqlo stores in Indonesia developed its modest line as a specific category, while hijup.com, the first Islamic fashion e-commerce established in Indonesia in 2011, is now an international platform serving up to seven million consumers (Susilo 2019). The attractive and playful modest fashion has become a dominant part of the everyday culture as well as a marker of self-expression, rejection of conservatism, and a medium to vocalize political views. Scholars have viewed the rise of the Hijaber Community and their displays of style and high-end products on social media as conspicuous consumption (Widjajanta et al. 2018) which define their identity as modern Muslim women who have to navigate between piety, and responsibility as Muslims while maintaining an individual style (Novitasari 2014). Others have moved away from viewing the trend as mere tension between piety and commercialization, such as Jones (2007) and Beta (2014, 2019) who both analyze modest fashion as the arena where politics, religiosity, and materiality intertwine and are at play. Beta analyzes young Muslim women who are fashionistas in the modest fashion landscape and are active on social media to share their political views, thus playing a significant role in post-reformasi Indonesia. The creative take on modest fashion in Indonesia also serves as a gateway to understanding society’s control over the female body, and how women are engaging with democracy, class dynamics, national identity, and global consumerism (van Wichelen 2010; Widjajanta et al. 2018).

Assessing how the countries in the Global North are embracing modest fashion, scholars have come to view the relationship between fashion and minority identity. Lewis asserts that the global popularity of Muslim fashion reflects how Muslims are “attempting to assert place” in the modern world (in Singh 2016). Yet, the inclusion of modest fashion in the global market also means stripping down the political identity that was attached to it. In a website aimed to explain American foreign policy worldwide, the U.S. Department of State explains modest fashion as “comfortable, fairly loose-fitting clothing that is less revealing than many contemporary styles” often worn by “some Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people—as well as people who prefer covered styles for aesthetic reasons” (Monsen 2021). The article explains how the modest fashion business is growing, developed by entrepreneurs regardless of their religious and cultural background, and worn by those who then define modesty in their terms. Muslim American athlete and Olympic medalist, Ibtihaj Muhammad, states, “Modesty is not just a trend—it’s a way of life” (in Monsen 2021). Muhammad has since created a modest fashion line herself, selling loose-cut clothing that can be worn by anyone regardless of religion and cultural background. The modest fashion is no longer marketed for its religious references, but pragmatism and the flexibility of its easy-to-wear designs as well as loose cuts. The global fashion industry’s embrace of Muslim fashion creates an image that the industry is open and tolerant while simultaneously denying its religious reference for the sake of attracting a wider market. This speaks to the cooptation of minority identities in the industry, not for inclusion, but to capitalize. It is these paradoxical relations that the global market has toward Muslim fashion that this chapter aims to examine.

The cooptation of minority identities in the fashion industry has been widely researched by scholars of various contexts. Tu (2011) discloses the operation of the fashion industry in coopting and draining minorities in her research on the popularity of “oriental” Asian designs in American fashion that was marked by the popularity of the “Asian chic” style and the surge and successes of Asian American designers. In her analysis of the rise of young Asian American designers in New York City, who among others survived and thrived through familial ties with Asian American seamstresses, Nguyen finds how the market sinisterly turned its back on the designers during the 2008 economic crisis. The market merely preys upon the minorities, creating styles inspired by their ethnic culture and creativity, while the designers and their seamstresses remained at the margin. The commodification of Asian culture and Asianness in the U.S. fashion industry did not translate to a structural change in the lives of minorities. Nguyen’s work serves as a model for this chapter as it scrutinizes the inclusivity of Indonesian fashion designers and modest fashion at the New York catwalks, and how the catwalks lure and make use of Indonesian modest fashion.

4 Discourses of Travel

Postcolonial scholars have discussed travel as a colonial practice, and to travel is to colonize. Orientalist travel literature reveals the role of traveling in imperialism, both as imperialists traveled to the colony and as the colonized visited the metropolis. For English women, the colony became landscapes of freedom and a reminder that they have the freedom while the colonized did not. White colonizers would use their surroundings and traveling functions as a mechanism to sustain the “us” versus “them,” “colonizer” and “colonized” dichotomy.

Through traveling, ideas of liberty are manifested to create myths of liberty or what Kaplan (1996) calls “mythologized narrativizations of displacement.” This narration is created by occidental travelers with little knowledge about the places they arrived at, as well as by tourists and travel writers. This chapter extends the discussion by shedding light on how the “modernist myth of travel” (Kaplan 1996) operates not only in narratives about traveling or white people's experience in the orient but also in today’s well-curated social media posts, both by westerners and non-westerners. These narratives too, display traveling as a superficial marker of success and liberties that disregard the material conditions behind the act of traveling nor address disparities that are created through traveling and migration. Just as travel had played an important tool during European colonization, by examining Indonesian modest fashion traveling to New York, this chapter proposes that travel is now serving as a neoliberal technology by creating (uneven) capital flow and the imagination that liberty and global success are achievable for all. This chapter will show how the idea of liberty works in tandem with the myth of travel, convincing women of the global south that traveling is a mark of success and need to be pursued at whatever cost.

Ideas of travel are also pertinent in Islamic teaching and often communicate the good purposes behind the act of moving. The word “hijra” for instance, which means “to abandon,” “to break ties with someone,” and “to migrate,” (Masud 2013) is used in the Quran to explain Prophet Muhammad’s journey from Mecca to Medina to seek security when threat towards Muslims in Mecca had escalated. Within this story, to hijra means to seek safety, to “the physical movement away from the unbelief” (Masud 2013) to worship and remain in God’s way. The Prophet moving to Medina was also marked by the start of the first year of the Islamic calendar, signifying the migration as a start of a new life. The Arabic word hijra interestingly has been reified in the 2010s by young middle-class Indonesians who now use the word to describe the journey of becoming more pious. This can be marked by the effort to learn the Quran together with friends, join a religious discussion, and learn from ulamas, and for the women, often it is signified by veiling and donning modest clothing. The call to hijra spreads through social media, such as Instagram @beranihijrah and @pemudahijrah (Musahadah and Triyono 2019). Addini (2019) argues that today’s practice of hijra has driven the term away from its religious meaning, and instead has come to represent “a mission of reform in every aspect of social, economic and political life.” To hijra in this perspective, is to become a better individual, not just in terms of piety, but in all aspects of societal and personal lives, even becoming financially stable. Addini opines that for Indonesians, hijra has become a social mode that demystifies religious rituals as only belonging to the older generation. With hashtag #hijrah becoming popular on social media and public figures sharing their hijra by donning modest attires and sharing their journey in vlogs, religiosity becomes appealing to the youth. This fits with Eickelman and Piscatori’s assertion that travel should be viewed as “specific forms of social action within Muslim religious traditions” (2013, p. 42). I see the popularity of hijra and its reification by middle-class Indonesians as indicative of how “traveling” is exceedingly serving as a locus in the lives of young Muslims. It communicates the modern belief that to be a good Muslim is not to remain stationary, but to rather move ahead, progress, and engage in the society, much like the modern society’s notion of progress.

5 Arriving in New York City

My first subject of research is a series of ads by Wardah, an Indonesian cosmetic brand that uses religiosity as its center niche by branding itself as the first halal cosmetic. Since 2002, Wardah has been using celebrity figures who wear the hijab as brand ambassadors, starting with the seasoned actress Inneke Koesherawaty, followed by the actress and singer, Dewi Sandra in 2013. At that time, Sandra was particularly well-known for recently choosing to wear the veil, and the public saw a contrast from her image in the early 2000s when she was known as a pop singer who often dances in her music videos. Sandra’s choice to veil represents the act of becoming more pious, of conducting what the young people would call hijra. During the rise of the Hijabers Community, Wardah appointed Dian Pelangi to become the face of the brand. When college students held workshops and events about veiling and fashioning the veil, Wardah often took part either to hold make-up workshops or as a sponsoring partner. The brand became synonymous with the trend of fashioning the hijab in Indonesia.

As Indonesian modest fashion blazed the global stage, Wardah was closely on its side. The brand supported three Indonesian designers, Dian Pelangi, Barly Asmara, and Zaskia Sungkar, to showcase their designs at the Couture Fashion Week in 2015 held at The Crowne Plaza Times Square, Manhattan, New York City. The three designers were set to display pieces that used traditional cloth from Lombok, Nusa Tenggara Barat, and accessorizing with pearls from the region. Before their departure to the U.S., the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism held a press conference coining the session “From Lombok to New York,” thereby highlighting how Indonesian modest fashion and local culture were successfully accessing the global stage.

Following The Couture Fashion Week, Wardah released an ad showing the three designers trotting tourist sites in New York City during wintertime. In the ads, Sungkar and Pelangi, who both wear the hijab, emulate New York City elites with beautiful clothing. Pelangi wears a white turban and feathered pink outer and long skirt, while Sungkar dons a dark red veil covered by a wide sun hat. The camera closes to show them both wearing Wardah’s makeup and follow the designers visiting famous tourist sites, such as Wall Street, Central Park, and Times Square and showing iconic New York City yellow cabs and the city’s gothic architecture. The edits go back and forth between the designers touring New York City and glimpses of their show at The Couture Fashion Week, applauded by the audience. The ad is narrated by three voices, representing each designer:

Rasanya seperti mimpi./This feels like a dream.

Ini adalah passion kami./This is our passion.

Sebuah kebanggaan./It is an honor.

Dari sebuah coretan menjadi karya yang tampil di panggung dunia./From sketches to masterpieces on a world stage.

Suara tepuk tangan dari semua yang hadir adalah buah penghargaan yang tak ternilai./Applause from everyone was the ultimate award.

Di saat karya kami bisa mempengaruhi kehidupan seseorang menjadi lebih baik/When our work created better lives for others.

Bersama Wardah kami ingin karya kami bisa menginspirasi wanita Indonesia/With Wardah, we hope to inspire Indonesian women (WardahBeauty, 2015).

The ad concludes with the tagline “Wardah inspiring beauty” hinting at how Wardah is set to inspire Indonesian women to reach their dream just as the designers have managed to reach theirs. The ad presents New York City as a metropolis in which the designers have “arrived.” The designers who are spectacularly dressed mimic high-class elites in fashion magazines, trotting New York City, with colors that stood in contrast to the grey and brown hues of the gothic architecture of the metropole. The designers are travelers who have finally reached their dream of global recognition. In one scene, Sungkar walks on the steel-structured Brooklyn Bridge. She glances upward to the sky and pulls out her gloved hand outward to catch the snow, her deep red lips smiling. She is a tourist, a foreigner, in a seemingly magical place. Through the figure of the designers as tourists and elites, the ad communicates ideas of success and the ability to transgress boundaries by arriving at the ‘metropolitan’ where the global stage is within grasp.

Images of women traveling abroad, specifically to the west, were an important theme in Wardah’s campaign. In the early 2010s, Wardah’s ads showcase Dewi Sandra and Dian Pelangi traveling to France and Italy. The two women wear modest fashion and hijab as tourists in Europe, visiting galleries and gardens, riding an air balloon, drinking a cup of coffee in a café, and enjoying the view. The ads display the beauty of the foreign landscape, the modest fashion, and the confident women with perfect makeup who are enjoying their time abroad. The ads depict the adventure and beauty that come with traveling abroad, thus building an idea that traveling is achievable and that Muslim women can and should tour the world. This type of message is widely accepted in the cosmetics industry; it is also used by other companies specializing in beauty products, such as Procter & Gamble (see Manzo 2023, this volume, Chap. 5).

This same message is directed to non-Indonesians and non-Muslims who have stereotyped the hijab as oppressive. At a 2017 show which again took place in New York and with different collaborators, Pelangi stated it best, “We are not oppressed and we just want to show the world we can still be beautiful and stylish with our hijabs on” (Sayyed 2017). Images of success of young Muslim designers in New York also function as a protest against the conservative religious views that limit women to the domestic realm. Simultaneously, it is also a resistance to the patriarchal, racist neoliberalist system of the western world that has long excluded women and people of color from ideas of success.

In Wardah advertisements, traveling is a signifier and neoliberalist technology that props the Indonesian modest fashion. The act of journeying around the globe is communicated through western materialist ideas that demand images of luxury, and New York City is depicted as a metropole and center of businesses. The ad does not show class diversity and poverty in New York subways and the boroughs, but rather provides a “sterile” image of arriving at the metropolitan city, with ideas of success, luxury, and wealth. This is a stark contrast to the profile of most Wardah consumers whom Wulandari and Agustini (2019) have discovered to be below the age of 31 and with a general monthly income of less than IDR 2.5 million (approx. USD 174). Wardah, therefore, does not depict the true lifestyle of its consumers, but as the tagline “Wardah Inspiring Beauty” hints, they offer to ‘inspire’ women to become those they see on screen.

The connection between Indonesian modest fashion and the New York catwalks became more prominent through time. In 2017, Pelangi and Asmara returned to New York with three other designers, this time taking part in a pre-event at the prestigious New York Fashion Week. The event compiles Indonesian designers on one stage under the theme “Indonesian Diversity.” This time, Pelangi explained how New York City inspires her design, explaining to the press that embellishments and jewels in her dresses “symbolize the buildings in New York” (Rukmananda 2017). She finds inspiration in the well-known book and Facebook page Humans of New York, which present a bricolage of people in New York City and their stories. The City’s architecture and colors are embedded in the designs and become a bridge between Indonesian modest clothing to its non-Muslims audience. As Tu notes, the success of Asian designers in the west “requires a delicate balance between an ability to internationalize and a capacity to represent the national” (Tu 2011, p. 14–15). Only when the Asian designers commit such skillful compromise that they become intelligible to the western audience and can claim a space on the world stage.

The skill to balance various values and expectations is fundamental for the designers of Indonesian modest fashion on their way to the New York catwalks. In a talk show interview, Asmara, Pelangi, and Sungkar explained the chain of events that led to them presenting Lombok textile (Sechan 2015). When submitting proposals and seeking support for the show, the designers met with Erica Majdi, the wife of the 2015 Lombok Governor, and the designers were assigned to become cultural ambassadors to present Lombok woven clothing (tenun) abroad. Each designer focused on different nuances and colors of tenun Lombok, with Pelangi focusing on bold colors, Sungkar using all pastel tones, and Asmara highlighting edgy designs with dark color schemes. Though Asmara did not exclusively specialize in Muslim fashion, all three designers chose to focus on modest fashion because of the request of the organizers in New York. Reaching the New York catwalk was, therefore, a result of a series of strategic decisions, made to fit with the needs of the audience and organizers in New York, local sponsors in Indonesia, as well as private and government sectors. The designers also delicately navigated between carrying a cultural mission to represent Lombok and responding to the market needs. Displaying tenun Lombok was also in line with the Nusa Tenggara Barat’s government mission to develop “Sharia tourism.” Lombok has a long history of Islamic kingdoms, setting itself apart from the Hindu-dominant Bali, and Sharia tourism became a brand that the local government developed from 2015 to 2016.

The Indonesian designers also have to find a niche to access the Couture Fashion Week. The event is named after the term “haute couture,” a style in French dress fashion that is classic and original in its designs in Europe and the Americas, through which fashion becomes a clear marker of social status (Latter et al. 2010; Stewart 2008). In the interwar period, the couture style faced tension with the popularity of casual clothing. Today, the term “couture” is popularly used to infer classic styles that are custom-made and handmade, requiring highly trained individuals and months for its preparation, therefore only accessible by the “ultra-rich” (Latter et al. 2010). While the term couture is defined and dominated by big fashion houses and renown designers in Europe and the U.S., Dian Pelangi was ready to respond to those who might doubt that their designs are not couture. In an interview, Pelangi explained that the tenun was created manually and a piece of fabric alone could take up to six months to finish, and such labor would allow their clothing to be considered couture (Sechan 2015). Through the tenun’s intricate craftmanship, the three designers reclaim the term “couture.” While designers can reify couture to include Indonesian artistry, media coverage of spectacle of traveling, and the luxurious images of high fashion led to a limited representation of the Indonesian tenun itself. Their focus on the luxurious fashion event in New York, the designers, and the spectacle of them arriving in New York neither overlooked the role of the Lombok weavers in the clothes, nor did it discuss the lack of appreciation and the unjust monthly pay that most weavers received that generally reach IDR 500.000 (approximately USD 35) (Sri Lestari 2015).

6 The Political Stance of Modest Fashion

In February 2017, merely one week following his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order which halted the resettlement of refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries who wished to enter the U.S. for 90 days ahead. Even more specifically, the Order suspended the incoming of Syrian refugees and other countries for more than 120 days. This Order was quickly coined by the public as “Muslim Ban,” which was presumably created to appease anti-immigrant supporters and can very well intensify anti-Islamic sentiments that have already been rampant in the U.S. following 9/11. Trump has been campaigning for the presidency since 2016 and among others, used the anti-immigrant rhetoric as represented by his slogan “America First.” This opens the way to my second discussion, which is the story of Anniesa Desvitasari Hasibuan, the first Indonesian designer who joined the New York Fashion Week in September 2016 at a solo show at Moynihan Station, one of the venues of the NYFW.

A new and upcoming designer who also runs a traveling agency with her husband, Hasibuan shocked many by becoming the first Indonesian designer to join the prestigious New York Fashion Week in 2016. She had only begun her line one year prior, and her achievement was considered a success story and an incredible feat. Western media celebrated Hasibuan as the first designer in New York Fashion Week to include a hijab in all the outfits, and this became meaningful as her show was held at a time when the U.S. was holding a presidential campaign and anti-immigrant views rising. Read against the political landscape of 2016, Hasibuan’s collection was celebrated by western media. Elle calls Hasibuan the “First Designer To Present NYFW Collection With Hijabs” and represents a “win for the modest fashion movement” (Rodulfo 2016). The media also rejoices Anniesa Hasibuan’s success as a newly arriving designer, writing, “Hasibuan was given a standing ovation–a rare sight at fashion week. Not bad for a one-year-old brand” (Rodulfo 2016). The media revealed its amazement at how she opened her first boutique in Jakarta in 2015 and not long after, established shops in Abu Dhabi and Istanbul (Beech 2018) News coverage by the Voice of America (Rukmananda and Umar 2016) shows behind-the-scenes footage, showing the hustle backstage and models ready to take on the catwalk. One model shared that it would be her first time wearing the veil and she was excited, while other critics mentioned that high fashion had “never seen hijab like this before” and its positive impact on Muslim culture. Meanwhile, Forbes Indonesia hailed Hasibuan as one of the Inspiring Women in 2017, specifying her expertise in design and fashion. Her pictures of traveling the world including New York city were displayed on her social media and were mainstreamed by entertainment television programs and gossip magazines alike. The public admired the success of her travel company and boutique.

Hasibuan also revealed that her motivation in joining the New York Fashion Week was not mere materiality but also nationalism. The 2016 show was titled “De Jayakarta,” named as such to represent Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. During the show, the audience could see a small Indonesian flag on the runway, and Special Broadcasting System (SBS) Australia focuses on how Hasibuan “wanted to make her mark on the fashion world and put her home country on the map” (Chang 2016). Hasibuan shared that the small Indonesian flag helped “calm her nerves,” reminding her of the bigger picture of why she was there: to represent her country (Nugent 2016). Through fashion, Hasibuan wanted to bring Indonesia to the New York audience and “introduce people to the different and diverse parts of Indonesia” (Chang 2016).

Mingling fashion with politics and social issues remained to be Hasibuan’s approach when she returned to New York Fashion Week in 2017, mere months after President Trump released an Executive Order barring refugees from Muslim dominated countries to enter the U.S. Americans responded to this “Muslim Ban” with protests and gathering funds for non-profits which provided legal assistance to refugees. Protests were held at the airports where refugees would enter, and the Democratic Party senators and politicians came out to criticize the executive order as an anti-immigrant ultra-right-wing policy. In its article, Elle reported Hasibuan’s show as a response to Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. Hasibuan hired all-immigrant and second-generation immigrants to walk the runway, and the Elle article discussed how the casting process included inquiring about the models’ view on immigration. In an audition video, a Swiss-American model talked about her Muslim mother and her view that “religion shouldn’t be an issue to immigrate” (Rodulfo 2017). Her audition video included a call to those who were fighting against anti-Muslim hate, stating, “It’s really important that we come together. That we fight for the good” (Rodulfo 2017). Models took part in the political statement that Hasibuan was communicating, and some were very aware of the role that they played and understood the cultural and political significance of the show. Hasibuan used her show to send messages of tolerance and equality. She explained how fashion and diversity are two sides of the same coin, “For me, fashion is an open world. I don’t want to discriminate […] The ability to express diversity in this business is a value that I hold on to,” she asserted (Rodulfo 2017).

Also at the New York Fashion Week 2017, five Indonesian designers collaborated in a show titled “Indonesia Diversity.” When talking to the press, Zubedi, one of the designers at the show, sent a message to the then-President Trump, “Mr. President, I love your country and also I love your people, and we will not (do) anything to you or your people. We are all the same, it’s about humanity” (Sayyed 2017). Zubedi’s designs include patches with names of cities where Muslims conducted pilgrimage, Mecca, Madinah, as well as the word jannah, which means “heaven.” The designs and the names of cities can be understood as a plight of Muslims everywhere, and a calling for camaraderie among Muslims to take stance. Zubedi also addressed broader issues of difference and race as her other clothing included a patch that says “All colors matter.”

While fashion has long been discussed as a political tool that can “enhance a person’s sense of agency” (Crane 2012), Hasibuan and Zubedi’s along with the western media’s perspective of Indonesian Muslim fashion reaching the New York catwalks helped create the notion that high fashion, which often identified as exclusive and elitist, could be grounded and in conversation with urgent political issues. Indonesian modest fashion on the New York catwalk was used to depict the fashion industry as open and political, even supportive of the plight of immigrants.

As the Indonesian modest fashion was serving a political purpose to protest for the Muslim-ban and anti-refugee sentiment, which was overtaking the western countries, we see the narratives about traveling taking shape in several ways. Indonesian modest fashion designers were welcomed to New York City. In their appreciation of the designs, the western public framed their shows as a political statement and a sign that Indonesian modest fashion has successfully transgressed geographical borders and able to present a teachable moment for high fashion and the western audience. Yet at the same time, the show highlights how traveling is a privilege and not available to all. While high-end designs reached the catwalks, possibly creating a niche for modest fashion and generating profits for clothing businesses, viewers were reminded of the many Muslim refugees and immigrants who were barred from crossing the border. This shows that the liberty to travel remains a myth. Seeking connection to Kaplan’s ideas of the “modernist myth of travel” (1996), in the case of Indonesian modest fashion in New York, we see traveling as technology for modernism in creating a classist capital-oriented society that made way for elites and businesses to pass borders. Meanwhile, immigrants and refugees were left in a state of precarity, and their mobility is contingent upon arbitrary policies and political agendas. Power relishes travel only when it supports modernist ideas of success and materialism, such as that represented by Hasibuan’s instant success and the possible capital that modest fashion would generate for the industry.

7 Traveling: The False Promise

One year following her New York Fashion Week show, Anniesa Hasibuan and her husband Andika Surachman were convicted for embezzlement and money laundering. Hasibuan was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, Surachman received 20 years, and both were required to pay a total of IDR 10 billion. First Travel, the travel company which Hasibuan and Surachman had established, provided services for umrah, a religious pilgrimage to Mecca that is shorter and more flexible than the haj. Costumers reported First Travel to the authorities for not providing the services which they had paid for and continuously delaying their trip to Mecca. During the trials, the prosecutors maintained that First Travel has defrauded approximately USD 65 million from more than 60,000 paying customers (Setiawan 2018).

First Travel began to market umrah trips in 2011 and is known for offering umrah tour packages cheaper than other companies. It set a price of IDR 14,3 million for an umrah trip to Mecca at a time when the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs established that an umrah trip would cost IDR 21 million. Their marketing strategy included establishing offices in big cities in Indonesia and building partnerships with more than 800 agents who worked to market the travel packages and seek customers. Some of the agents have used First Travel for the umrah themselves and were willing to vouch for the company’s credibility (Movanita 2018b). The company also paid celebrities and sent them or their family for free umrah to market their products (Rahmadi 2017). Their trips and accommodation at luxurious hotels were carefully documented and shared through the media to attract new clients. The company also decorated their office with glamorous European style architecture and furniture, which according to a former employee, served as a facade to convince customers of the company's success (Movanita 2017). The former employee explained that the company used social media, such as Facebook, to show that the company is doing well, and comments and complains from clients would directly be deleted and their account blocked. Facades of success were also created through Hasibuan and Surachman’s posts on Instagram which would show them travelling to foreign countries and their opulent lifestyle. These images were used to communicate to customers that they would journey to Mecca in a style that Hasibuan, Surachman, and the celebrities they hired for promos have presented in the media.

During the trials, the Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (INTRAC) reported that the company owners had used customer's money for other business investment as well as personal needs. First Travel bought shares of a restaurant in London, funded Hasibuan’s fashion business and the shows in New York, as well paid for the couple's luxurious lifestyle, branded accessories, imported bags, and jewelry (Erdianto 2017a, b; Movanita 2018a).

The case of First Media not only revealed the case of how a company took advantage of the crossings between religiosity with capital and conducted crime, but it also revealed the society that had trusted and relied on the company, disregarding their apprehension on why first Travel was able to offer such low-price trips. Some of the agents were becoming suspicious with the low price, but the company were not willing to reveal their strategy and simply explained that “it was a company secret.” They instead gave an explanation that the low price was possible because customers paid for their trip up to one year prior to the trip (Movanita 2018b). As Hasibuan and Surachman were in trials, the media began to present stories of the customers who lost their money to the promises of First Travel, revealing the emotional toll the company has caused them. When appealing to the House of Representatives, travel agents also shared the stress they felt, feeling responsible for the clients who are often their relatives and acquaintances.

When it was clear that the company’s finance was in shambles, a number of agents were invited for a meeting during which Hasibuan asked them to find new investors to provide money to make down payment for an airline company because the company did not have money to do so (Movanita 2018). An agent who served as a witness during the trial noted that Hasibuan remained confident that they would be able to send the customers to Mecca, while the agents were pessimistic, having heard numerous false promises in the past (Movanita 2018). Customers were also asked to pay more to charter a new commercial jet, but even after they had made that payment, they were not sent for their umrah. Up to the trial, Hasibuan and Surachman’s lawyers still maintained that First Travel intended to send their customers for the umrah that they had paid for. When their license was revoked, they planned out a strategy to send customers through the services of other travel companies. The company’s relentless tone of optimism, promising that customers would be able to reach Mecca no matter what resonates with the ubiquitous false belief that everyone could travel in this modern world. The huge number of people scammed by First Travel did not only represent how people were motivated to worship and become better Muslims, but it also hinted at the impact of the false promise that everyone could travel.

A New York Times article summarizes its report on Hasibuan’s case by stating “Indonesia’s most celebrated Islamic fashion designer, made her living at the intersection of faith and commerce. Her downfall came at the same crossroads” (Beech 2018). This statement speaks of the fraught relations between faith and commerce, which applies not just for the umrah tour business and how First Travel was run, but also to Hasibuan’s modest fashion brand that was established through her travel business and was sustained by the spectacle of traveling. The narrative of Muslims being able to travel and go abroad easily is also ubiquitous throughout this case, and it functioned to feed First Travel in its operation as well as Hasibuan’s fashion line that was previously celebrated by the western media.

8 Conclusion

As this chapter has exhibited, the spectacle of traveling is a dominant signifier that supported the commodification of Indonesian Muslim fashion in both the global and local markets. With Indonesian modest fashion on New York City catwalks used by American media as a statement against the Trump government’s Muslim ban, it becomes clear that the spectacle of travel is also rooted in the human rights discourse of liberty, to which many middle-class Indonesian Muslim women sought inspiration. Missing from these depictions of success and going global is the discussion of materiality, the capitalist motivation of the fashion industry to gain profit through modest fashion, and the communities denied from transgressing borders due to geopolitical and social conditions all while businesses are given the freedom to travel.

Displays of Indonesian Muslim women be it modest fashion designers or celebrity Instagram (celebgram) traveling and arriving in New York City can be viewed as an expression of empowerment that goes against conservative patriarchal views that limit women in the domestic realm. As this research unravels, however, the connection between ideas of going global, travel, and freedom is convoluted and has created a modern-day “mythologized narrativizations of displacement” (Kaplan 1996). Successes lauded in New York catwalks and images of Muslim women trotting the globe in opulent lifestyle are far from the realities of most Muslim women in Indonesia, and in many ways, are tools of the capital-oriented structures that prey on them.

Notes

  1. 1.

    On the hijabers identity and the industry of Islamic culture see Manzo 2023, this volume.

  2. 2.

    The same idea that underpins “American dream,” the myth that success as achievable by migrants only to include them within the larger capitalist structure. For refugees in particular, this mechanism works through labor, or the practice what Nguyen (2012) points out as an act of paying back “the debt of freedom”.