Out of thin air: emerging Muslim fashion entrepreneurs and the spectre of labour in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia’s bid to be the world’s Muslim fashion capital involves a growing number of female Muslim fashion designers and business owners. With more urban Indonesian young women adopting modest clothing, increasing state support for creative and digital economy, and ease of access and distribution, the market expansion of the Muslim fashion industry allows young Muslim women to become successful entrepreneurs and good virtuous Muslims at the same time. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines how Indonesia’s emerging female ethical entrepreneurs frame their successes using highly individualistic and virtuous registers. Muslim women’s fashion entrepreneurs seem to be concerned primarily with their passion, talent, and hard work combined with their commitment to religious practices to receive ‘blessings’ from God for their businesses. Labour conditions of mostly lower-class Muslim women working in home-based garment workshops or konveksi, manufacturing the new styles of hijab or veil and modest dresses for the industry, were treated as dismissible and small adjustments were quick to be celebrated as improvements. This paper calls for a critical reading of Muslim women’s economic participation and argues that the visibility of middle-class young women as aspiring entrepreneurs conceals the exploitation of lower-class young women’s labour.

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