The Role of Social Media for the Modest Fashion Movement in Indonesia

Abstract

Islamic Modest Fashion has become one of the emerging creative industries. It is said that social media has making a role in its development. From designers, hijabi bloggers and then instagrammers, many women are often seen posting their everyday outfits through social media. They want to combine their faith with cutting-edge fashion trend. Muslim consumers have become a potential targeted market due to the increasing of women wearing hijab. Muslim consumers are projected to spend $327 billion on clothing by 2019. Indonesia, as the biggest Muslim majority country, has targeted to be the Center of Islamic Modest Fashion in the world as its national branding by 2020. This study will examine how social media especially blog and Instagram can lead the movement of Islamic Modest Fashion in Indonesia, how it also brings consumer culture to hijab and as the result it triggers Indonesia to brand itself. This study will illustrate how all the elements of fashion industry in Indonesia including the designers, bloggers, instagrammers and also Indonesian Agency for Creative Economy (BEKRAF) work together to make Indonesia the center of Islamic Modest Fashion. This research will be conducted through in-depth interviews with designers, bloggers, instagrammers and agency officials. Besides in-depth interviews, this research will investigate pictures posted on Instagram through semiotic analysis in the context of the Islamic Modest Fashion trend. This research will also contain a literature review of a diverse group of studies on topics related to the study. This research will be examined through several theoretical frameworks including the study of social media, creative industry and consumer culture. Fashion and consumer culture are also two main topics because fashion furthermore leads to the consumer culture. The possible benefit of this research is to be a reference literature of Islamic Modest Fashion especially in an Indonesian context.