Some NYTimes articles
Apr. 5th, 2007 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
On "natural" pools
From Europe, a No-Chlorine Backyard Pool
By STEVEN KURUTZ
MICK HILLEARY, an industrial designer who builds zoo exhibits and trade show displays, and who expanded into residential pools five years ago, has found that Americans have a clearly defined idea of what constitutes a proper swimming pool.
“It’s a white-tiled thing,” said Mr. Hilleary, whose company, Total Habitat, in Bonner Springs, Kan., specializes in what could be called the opposite of the white- or blue-tiled things found in millions of backyards across the country.
The “natural pools” that Total Habitat builds are bordered with wood, planted with lush vegetation and free of chemicals like chlorine; they resemble nothing so much as a swimming hole. “It’s natural-looking, like a pond,” Mr. Hilleary said. “But the water looks so clean. People really want to swim in it, more than in a farm pond.”
Natural swimming pools (or swimming ponds, as they are called in Europe, where the concept originated 20 years ago) are self-cleaning pools that combine swimming areas and water gardens. Materials and designs vary — the pools can be lined with rubber or reinforced polyethylene, as in the case of Total Habitat’s, and may look rustic or modern — but all natural pools rely on “regeneration” zones, areas given over to aquatic plants that act as organic cleansers.
The pools have skimmers and pumps that circulate the water through the regeneration zone and draw it across a wall of rocks, loose gravel or tiles, to which friendly bacteria attach, serving as an additional biological filter. Unlike artificial ponds, which tend to be as murky with groundwater runoff and sediment from soil erosion as the natural ponds they’re modeled on, in a natural pool the water is clear enough to see through to the bottom.
The pools, which cost about the same as or slightly more than conventional ones, depending on landscaping, appeal to gardeners because of the great variety of plant life that can be grown in them, as well as to green advocates and others who don’t want to swim in chlorinated water.
“Many, many people don’t like chlorine,” said Bryan Morse, who runs a landscaping company in Vista, Calif., called Expanding Horizons that builds water features and branched into natural pools five years ago. Taking advantage of the Southern California climate, Mr. Morse created a sort of jungle lagoon in his own backyard, building a natural swimming pool with a thatch-roof palapa and a regeneration zone filled with tropical foliage like Madagascar palm and varieties of canna lilies.
The business is hardly a growth industry, at least in the United States. Total Habitat has built eight natural pools, mostly in the Midwest. (Mr. Hilleary said he has formed a trade organization, the Natural Swimming Pool Association, “to protect the integrity” of the industry; he has certified himself under its requirements. The group has only two members, Mr. Hilleary and Michael Littlewood, a builder in England.) Mr. Morse said he has built four pools, including his own, mostly for “ex-hippies.”
The pools are more popular in Austria, where a company called Biotop has been designing them for residential and public use since 1986 and now installs about 50 a year, according to Peter Petrich, Biotop’s owner and the person credited with inventing the concept.
Mr. Petrich said he and his colleagues have given much consideration to why natural pools haven’t caught on in the United States and have concluded that “perhaps in Europe people have more contact with nature and life is not so clinical.”
Toni Schneeweiss of Biotop said that private pools in Austria, unlike those in the United States, generally do not require building permits, which can be harder to obtain for projects using unfamiliar technology. But it is also true that natural pools are not well known in the United States, and that it is hard to find people to build them.
For builders like Mr. Hilleary and Mr. Morse, natural pools are a side business, and mainstream pool contractors don’t seem to offer them at all. Penny Johnson, the chairwoman of the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals, an industry trade group, said she had never heard of the concept until she was asked about it for this article. She expressed skepticism about the technology. “I don’t know how plants could filter the water for bathing use,” she said, adding that in her experience outdoor pools have to be “shocked” with chemicals to kill bacteria.
Asked about safety concerns, Mr. Petrich said that the water in the natural pools his company builds meets European Union standards for bacteria levels and that the risk of swimmers becoming sick is “very low.”
One American homeowner who has such a pool, Jim Smith, a 45-year-old computer programmer who lives in a suburb of Wichita, Kan., said he learned about the pools in a sales pitch given by Mr. Hilleary at a home show in 2002. Mr. Smith and his wife, Susie, who is an avid gardener, decided to build a natural pool with a miniature waterfall, plants like hornwort and anacharis and a 40-foot recirculating stream that would run past their living room windows. (Mr. Smith said he spent about $50,000 on the pool, or $20,000 more than he estimates a standard pool would have cost; he attributed the higher cost in part to elaborate landscaping.)
The couple, who have two daughters, had a chlorinated pool at a previous home, and Mr. Smith said the transition was difficult. “It took us the first year to learn how to deal with the water,” he said, referring to the way natural pools can become overgrown with algae. “In a regular pool, you just put chlorine in and shock it.”
Indeed, algae is the great scourge of the natural pool world, for aesthetic reasons more than anything else. “It’s very important for people that their water be clear,” said Mr. Petrich, whose pools in Europe use plants to starve algae of nutrients.
Algae tends to be a problem in the first year of a pool’s existence and then to clear up significantly once the plants have grown large and developed a root system, he said. (Each spring, natural pools will go through an algae phase anyway, Mr. Morse said.) But given algae’s sliminess and the widespread view of it as disgusting, Mr. Hilleary has taken additional measures to stem the growth of algae and eliminate bacteria, installing ultraviolet sterilizers in the pump area.
Mr. Morse said he adds trace amounts of chlorine — less than the amount found in tap water — which reacts with silver and copper beads housed in the pump area and has a similar effect.
Still, owners say that once they adjust to the idea of their pools as living ecosystems and master the maintenance particular to natural pools — trimming dead plants; fishing debris and the occasional snake or turtle out of the water — there are advantages. Watching the seasons change is one. “In the spring, all the wildflowers come up,” Mr. Smith said, both in and near the water. “In December, the pool ices over and becomes gorgeous.” Two ducks spent the last month visiting the Smiths’ pool.
There are also the elaborate landscaping and design possibilities. The regeneration zone can be along the perimeter of a natural pool or on one side of it, separate from the swimming area, and, as Mr. Hilleary says, “a person can go to town with water plants,” like marsh marigolds and water lilies.
Bill Johnson, a petroleum engineer in Wichita, built a natural pool at his family’s house last summer with two waterfalls and a bordering wall built of massive boulders — a design that would have been difficult with a conventional pool, he said, because the concrete liner might have buckled under the weight. “With the natural pool I don’t mind if the ground shifts a little,” Mr. Johnson said. “It gave us flexibility with the landscape.”
Mr. Littlewood, a landscape designer in England who has built 35 natural pools in southern England since 2001 and wrote a book on the subject, “Natural Swimming Pools,” said a natural pool blends into its surroundings in a way that a “turquoise box” cannot. “It’s beautiful to look at all year round,” he said, “and you can educate your children about the ecology.”
Some owners of conventional pools have also begun turning toward more organic-looking styles, said Gina Samarotto, a designer at All American Custom Pools and Spas in Norwalk, Conn., who has noticed an increased demand for landscape features like boulders and native plants around pools. She added that she has also seen an increase in the popularity of copper-silver ionization systems that significantly reduce chlorine content.
Whether Americans will go for the natural pool remains to be seen. For those who do install them, Mr. Smith offered some advice born of experience. “I wouldn’t say they’re for everyone,” he said. “You can’t be uptight and unable to wait on nature to repair things.”
Algae, he said, “is natural, and healthy water is going to have some algae.”
One more tip: “Kids like to throw algae.”
On fashion and the hijab
We, Myself and I
By RUTH LA FERLA
FOR Aysha Hussain, getting dressed each day is a fraught negotiation. Ms. Hussain, a 24-year-old magazine writer in New York, is devoted to her pipe-stem Levi’s and determined to incorporate their brash modernity into her wardrobe while adhering to the tenets of her Muslim faith. “It’s still a struggle,” Ms. Hussain, a Pakistani-American, confided. “But I don’t think it’s impossible.”
Ms. Hussain has worked out an artful compromise, concealing her curves under a mustard-tone cropped jacket and a tank top that is long enough to cover her hips.
Some of her Muslim sisters follow a more conservative path. Leena al-Arian, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, joined a women’s worship group last Saturday night. Her companions, who sat cross-legged on prayer mats in a cramped apartment in the Hyde Park neighborhood, were variously garbed in beaded tunics, harem-style trousers, gauzy veils and colorful pashminas. Ms. Arian herself wore a loose-fitting turquoise tunic over fluid jeans. She covered her hair, neck and shoulders with a brightly patterned hijab, the head scarf that is emblematic of the Islamic call to modesty.
Like many of her contemporaries who come from diverse social and cultural backgrounds and nations, Ms. Arian has devised a strategy to reconcile her faith with the dictates of fashion — a challenge by turns stimulating and frustrating and, for some of her peers, a constant point of tension.
Injecting fashion into a traditional Muslim wardrobe is “walking a fine line,” said Dilshad D. Ali, the Islam editor of Beliefnet.com, a Web site for spiritual seekers. A flash point for controversy is the hijab, which is viewed by some as a politically charged symbol of radical Islam and of female subjugation that invites reactions from curiosity to outright hostility.
In purely aesthetic terms, the devout must work to evolve a style that is attractive but not provocative, demure but not dour — friendly to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
“Some young women follow the letter of the rule,” Ms. Ali observed. Others are more flexible. “Maybe their shirts are tight. Maybe the scarf is not really covering their chest, and older Muslim women’s tongues will wag.”
The search for balance makes getting dressed “a really intentional, mindful event in our lives every day,” said Asra Nomani, the outspoken author of “Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam” (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). Clothing is all the more significant, Ms. Nomani said, because what a Muslim woman chooses to wear “is a critical part of her identity.”
Many younger women seek proactively to shape that identity, adopting the hijab without pressure from family or friends, or from the Koran, which does not mandate covering the head.
“Family pressure is the exception, not the rule,” said Ausma Khan, the editor of Muslim Girl, a new magazine aimed at young women who, when it come to dress, “make their own personal choice.”
The decision can be difficult. Today few retailers cater to a growing American Muslim population that is variously estimated to be in the range of three to seven million. “Looking for clothes that are covering can be a real challenge when you go to a typical store,” Ms. Khan said.
Only a couple of years ago, Nordstrom conducted a fashion seminar at the Tysons Corner Center mall in McLean, Va., a magnet for affluent Muslim women in suburban Washington. The store sought to entice them with a profusion of head scarves, patterned blouses and subdued tailored pieces, but for the most part missed the nuances, said shoppers who attended the event. They were shown calf-length skirts and short-sleeve jackets of a type prohibited for the orthodox, who cover their legs and arms entirely.
“For me the biggest struggle is to find clothes in the department stores,” said Ms. Arian, who has worn the hijab since she was 13. She scours the Web and stores like Bebe, Zara, Express and H & M for skirts long enough to meet her standards. The majority, gathered through the hips, are “not very flattering on women with curves,” she said, chuckling ruefully, “and a lot of Middle Eastern women have curves.”
Maryah Qureshi, a graduate student in Chicago, has a similarly tricky time navigating conventional stores. “When we do find a sister-friendly item,” she said, “we tend to buy it in every color.”
Tam Naveed, a young freelance writer in New York, has devised an urbane uniform, tweed pants, a long-sleeve shirt and a snugly fastened scarf that dramatically sets off her features.
Ms. Nomani, the author, improvises her own head covering by wearing a hoodie or a baseball cap to mosque. “I call it ghetto hijab,” she said tartly. For everyday, she buys shirtdresses at the Gap. “They cover your backside, but they’re still the Gap. That kind of gives you a visa between the two worlds.”
In its fashion pages, Muslim Girl addresses concerns about fashion by encouraging young readers to mix and match current designs from a variety of sources, and reinforces the message that religion and fashion need not be mutually exclusive.
“We are trying to keep our finger on the pulse of what women want,” Ms. Khan said. Fashion pages, shown alongside columns offering romantic advice and articles on saving the environment, are among the more popular for the magazine’s teenage readers, she said, adding that the magazine’s circulation of 50,000 is expected to double next year.
Aspiring style-setters also find inspiration on retail Web sites like Artizara.com, which offers a high-neck white lace shirtdress and a sleeveless wrap jumper; and thehijabshop.com, with its elasticized hijabs, which can be slipped over the head.
Some women seek out fashions from a handful of designers who cater to them. “I think people like me are starting to see that Muslim women make up a significant market and are expressing their entrepreneurial spirit,” said Brooke Samad, a 28-year-old Muslim woman who designs kimono-sleeve wrap coats and floor-length interpretations of the pencil skirt out of a guest room in her home in Highland Hills, N.J.
“We follow trends, but we do keep to our guidelines,” said Ms. Samad, whose label is called Marabo. “And we’re careful with the fabrics to make sure they aren’t too clingy.”
Today fashion itself is more in tune with the values of Islam, revealing styles having given way to a relatively modest layered look. Elena Kovyrzina, the creative director of Muslim Girl, pointed to of-the-moment runway designs, any one of which might be appropriate for the magazine’s fashion pages: a voluminous Ungaro blouse with a high neck and full, flowing sleeves; a billowing Marni coat discreetly belted at the waist; and a Prada satin turban. Among the more free-spirited looks Ms. Kovyrzina singled out was a DKNY long-sleeve shirt and man-tailored trousers, topped with a hair-concealing baseball cap.
There are Muslim women who choose to cover as part of a journey of self-discovery. In “Infidel” (Free Press, 2007), her memoir of rebellion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali recalls as a girl wearing a concealing long black robe. “It had a thrill to it,” Ms. Hirsi Ali writes, “a sensuous feeling. It made me feel powerful: underneath this screen lay a previously unsuspected but potentially lethal femininity. I was unique.”
But adopting the hijab also invites adversity. A survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations last year found that nearly half of Americans believe that Islam encourages the oppression of women. Referring to that survey, Ms. Hussain, the New York journalist, observed, “Many of these people think, ‘Oh, if a woman is covered, she must be oppressed.’ ”
Still, after 9/11, Ms. Hussain made a point of wearing the hijab. “Politically,” she said, “it lets people know you’re not trying to hide from them.”
Among the young, Ms. Nomani said, “there is a pressure to show your colors.”
“Young people aren’t empowered enough to change foreign policy,” she said, so they adopt a hybrid of modern and Muslim garb, which is “their way to say, ‘I’m Muslim and I’m proud.’ ”
Such bravado has its perils. Jenan Mohajir, a member of the prayer group near the University of Chicago, spoke with some bitterness about being waylaid as she traveled. Ms. Mohajir, who works with the Interfaith Youth Core, which promotes cooperation among religions, recalled an official at airport security telling her: “You might as well step aside. You have too many clothes on.”
What was she wearing? “Jeans, a tunic, sandals and a scarf.”
Ms. Hussain no longer covers her head but has adopted a look meant to play down misconceptions without compromising her piety. “Living in New York,” she said, “has made me want to experiment more with colors and in general to be more bold. I don’t want to scare people. I want them to say, ‘Wow!’ ”
She has noticed a like-minded tendency among her peers. “In the way that we present ourselves to the rest of the world, we are definitely lightening up.”
And, bonus, an post on "the real barrier to communication".
From Europe, a No-Chlorine Backyard Pool
By STEVEN KURUTZ
MICK HILLEARY, an industrial designer who builds zoo exhibits and trade show displays, and who expanded into residential pools five years ago, has found that Americans have a clearly defined idea of what constitutes a proper swimming pool.
“It’s a white-tiled thing,” said Mr. Hilleary, whose company, Total Habitat, in Bonner Springs, Kan., specializes in what could be called the opposite of the white- or blue-tiled things found in millions of backyards across the country.
The “natural pools” that Total Habitat builds are bordered with wood, planted with lush vegetation and free of chemicals like chlorine; they resemble nothing so much as a swimming hole. “It’s natural-looking, like a pond,” Mr. Hilleary said. “But the water looks so clean. People really want to swim in it, more than in a farm pond.”
Natural swimming pools (or swimming ponds, as they are called in Europe, where the concept originated 20 years ago) are self-cleaning pools that combine swimming areas and water gardens. Materials and designs vary — the pools can be lined with rubber or reinforced polyethylene, as in the case of Total Habitat’s, and may look rustic or modern — but all natural pools rely on “regeneration” zones, areas given over to aquatic plants that act as organic cleansers.
The pools have skimmers and pumps that circulate the water through the regeneration zone and draw it across a wall of rocks, loose gravel or tiles, to which friendly bacteria attach, serving as an additional biological filter. Unlike artificial ponds, which tend to be as murky with groundwater runoff and sediment from soil erosion as the natural ponds they’re modeled on, in a natural pool the water is clear enough to see through to the bottom.
The pools, which cost about the same as or slightly more than conventional ones, depending on landscaping, appeal to gardeners because of the great variety of plant life that can be grown in them, as well as to green advocates and others who don’t want to swim in chlorinated water.
“Many, many people don’t like chlorine,” said Bryan Morse, who runs a landscaping company in Vista, Calif., called Expanding Horizons that builds water features and branched into natural pools five years ago. Taking advantage of the Southern California climate, Mr. Morse created a sort of jungle lagoon in his own backyard, building a natural swimming pool with a thatch-roof palapa and a regeneration zone filled with tropical foliage like Madagascar palm and varieties of canna lilies.
The business is hardly a growth industry, at least in the United States. Total Habitat has built eight natural pools, mostly in the Midwest. (Mr. Hilleary said he has formed a trade organization, the Natural Swimming Pool Association, “to protect the integrity” of the industry; he has certified himself under its requirements. The group has only two members, Mr. Hilleary and Michael Littlewood, a builder in England.) Mr. Morse said he has built four pools, including his own, mostly for “ex-hippies.”
The pools are more popular in Austria, where a company called Biotop has been designing them for residential and public use since 1986 and now installs about 50 a year, according to Peter Petrich, Biotop’s owner and the person credited with inventing the concept.
Mr. Petrich said he and his colleagues have given much consideration to why natural pools haven’t caught on in the United States and have concluded that “perhaps in Europe people have more contact with nature and life is not so clinical.”
Toni Schneeweiss of Biotop said that private pools in Austria, unlike those in the United States, generally do not require building permits, which can be harder to obtain for projects using unfamiliar technology. But it is also true that natural pools are not well known in the United States, and that it is hard to find people to build them.
For builders like Mr. Hilleary and Mr. Morse, natural pools are a side business, and mainstream pool contractors don’t seem to offer them at all. Penny Johnson, the chairwoman of the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals, an industry trade group, said she had never heard of the concept until she was asked about it for this article. She expressed skepticism about the technology. “I don’t know how plants could filter the water for bathing use,” she said, adding that in her experience outdoor pools have to be “shocked” with chemicals to kill bacteria.
Asked about safety concerns, Mr. Petrich said that the water in the natural pools his company builds meets European Union standards for bacteria levels and that the risk of swimmers becoming sick is “very low.”
One American homeowner who has such a pool, Jim Smith, a 45-year-old computer programmer who lives in a suburb of Wichita, Kan., said he learned about the pools in a sales pitch given by Mr. Hilleary at a home show in 2002. Mr. Smith and his wife, Susie, who is an avid gardener, decided to build a natural pool with a miniature waterfall, plants like hornwort and anacharis and a 40-foot recirculating stream that would run past their living room windows. (Mr. Smith said he spent about $50,000 on the pool, or $20,000 more than he estimates a standard pool would have cost; he attributed the higher cost in part to elaborate landscaping.)
The couple, who have two daughters, had a chlorinated pool at a previous home, and Mr. Smith said the transition was difficult. “It took us the first year to learn how to deal with the water,” he said, referring to the way natural pools can become overgrown with algae. “In a regular pool, you just put chlorine in and shock it.”
Indeed, algae is the great scourge of the natural pool world, for aesthetic reasons more than anything else. “It’s very important for people that their water be clear,” said Mr. Petrich, whose pools in Europe use plants to starve algae of nutrients.
Algae tends to be a problem in the first year of a pool’s existence and then to clear up significantly once the plants have grown large and developed a root system, he said. (Each spring, natural pools will go through an algae phase anyway, Mr. Morse said.) But given algae’s sliminess and the widespread view of it as disgusting, Mr. Hilleary has taken additional measures to stem the growth of algae and eliminate bacteria, installing ultraviolet sterilizers in the pump area.
Mr. Morse said he adds trace amounts of chlorine — less than the amount found in tap water — which reacts with silver and copper beads housed in the pump area and has a similar effect.
Still, owners say that once they adjust to the idea of their pools as living ecosystems and master the maintenance particular to natural pools — trimming dead plants; fishing debris and the occasional snake or turtle out of the water — there are advantages. Watching the seasons change is one. “In the spring, all the wildflowers come up,” Mr. Smith said, both in and near the water. “In December, the pool ices over and becomes gorgeous.” Two ducks spent the last month visiting the Smiths’ pool.
There are also the elaborate landscaping and design possibilities. The regeneration zone can be along the perimeter of a natural pool or on one side of it, separate from the swimming area, and, as Mr. Hilleary says, “a person can go to town with water plants,” like marsh marigolds and water lilies.
Bill Johnson, a petroleum engineer in Wichita, built a natural pool at his family’s house last summer with two waterfalls and a bordering wall built of massive boulders — a design that would have been difficult with a conventional pool, he said, because the concrete liner might have buckled under the weight. “With the natural pool I don’t mind if the ground shifts a little,” Mr. Johnson said. “It gave us flexibility with the landscape.”
Mr. Littlewood, a landscape designer in England who has built 35 natural pools in southern England since 2001 and wrote a book on the subject, “Natural Swimming Pools,” said a natural pool blends into its surroundings in a way that a “turquoise box” cannot. “It’s beautiful to look at all year round,” he said, “and you can educate your children about the ecology.”
Some owners of conventional pools have also begun turning toward more organic-looking styles, said Gina Samarotto, a designer at All American Custom Pools and Spas in Norwalk, Conn., who has noticed an increased demand for landscape features like boulders and native plants around pools. She added that she has also seen an increase in the popularity of copper-silver ionization systems that significantly reduce chlorine content.
Whether Americans will go for the natural pool remains to be seen. For those who do install them, Mr. Smith offered some advice born of experience. “I wouldn’t say they’re for everyone,” he said. “You can’t be uptight and unable to wait on nature to repair things.”
Algae, he said, “is natural, and healthy water is going to have some algae.”
One more tip: “Kids like to throw algae.”
On fashion and the hijab
We, Myself and I
By RUTH LA FERLA
FOR Aysha Hussain, getting dressed each day is a fraught negotiation. Ms. Hussain, a 24-year-old magazine writer in New York, is devoted to her pipe-stem Levi’s and determined to incorporate their brash modernity into her wardrobe while adhering to the tenets of her Muslim faith. “It’s still a struggle,” Ms. Hussain, a Pakistani-American, confided. “But I don’t think it’s impossible.”
Ms. Hussain has worked out an artful compromise, concealing her curves under a mustard-tone cropped jacket and a tank top that is long enough to cover her hips.
Some of her Muslim sisters follow a more conservative path. Leena al-Arian, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, joined a women’s worship group last Saturday night. Her companions, who sat cross-legged on prayer mats in a cramped apartment in the Hyde Park neighborhood, were variously garbed in beaded tunics, harem-style trousers, gauzy veils and colorful pashminas. Ms. Arian herself wore a loose-fitting turquoise tunic over fluid jeans. She covered her hair, neck and shoulders with a brightly patterned hijab, the head scarf that is emblematic of the Islamic call to modesty.
Like many of her contemporaries who come from diverse social and cultural backgrounds and nations, Ms. Arian has devised a strategy to reconcile her faith with the dictates of fashion — a challenge by turns stimulating and frustrating and, for some of her peers, a constant point of tension.
Injecting fashion into a traditional Muslim wardrobe is “walking a fine line,” said Dilshad D. Ali, the Islam editor of Beliefnet.com, a Web site for spiritual seekers. A flash point for controversy is the hijab, which is viewed by some as a politically charged symbol of radical Islam and of female subjugation that invites reactions from curiosity to outright hostility.
In purely aesthetic terms, the devout must work to evolve a style that is attractive but not provocative, demure but not dour — friendly to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
“Some young women follow the letter of the rule,” Ms. Ali observed. Others are more flexible. “Maybe their shirts are tight. Maybe the scarf is not really covering their chest, and older Muslim women’s tongues will wag.”
The search for balance makes getting dressed “a really intentional, mindful event in our lives every day,” said Asra Nomani, the outspoken author of “Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam” (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). Clothing is all the more significant, Ms. Nomani said, because what a Muslim woman chooses to wear “is a critical part of her identity.”
Many younger women seek proactively to shape that identity, adopting the hijab without pressure from family or friends, or from the Koran, which does not mandate covering the head.
“Family pressure is the exception, not the rule,” said Ausma Khan, the editor of Muslim Girl, a new magazine aimed at young women who, when it come to dress, “make their own personal choice.”
The decision can be difficult. Today few retailers cater to a growing American Muslim population that is variously estimated to be in the range of three to seven million. “Looking for clothes that are covering can be a real challenge when you go to a typical store,” Ms. Khan said.
Only a couple of years ago, Nordstrom conducted a fashion seminar at the Tysons Corner Center mall in McLean, Va., a magnet for affluent Muslim women in suburban Washington. The store sought to entice them with a profusion of head scarves, patterned blouses and subdued tailored pieces, but for the most part missed the nuances, said shoppers who attended the event. They were shown calf-length skirts and short-sleeve jackets of a type prohibited for the orthodox, who cover their legs and arms entirely.
“For me the biggest struggle is to find clothes in the department stores,” said Ms. Arian, who has worn the hijab since she was 13. She scours the Web and stores like Bebe, Zara, Express and H & M for skirts long enough to meet her standards. The majority, gathered through the hips, are “not very flattering on women with curves,” she said, chuckling ruefully, “and a lot of Middle Eastern women have curves.”
Maryah Qureshi, a graduate student in Chicago, has a similarly tricky time navigating conventional stores. “When we do find a sister-friendly item,” she said, “we tend to buy it in every color.”
Tam Naveed, a young freelance writer in New York, has devised an urbane uniform, tweed pants, a long-sleeve shirt and a snugly fastened scarf that dramatically sets off her features.
Ms. Nomani, the author, improvises her own head covering by wearing a hoodie or a baseball cap to mosque. “I call it ghetto hijab,” she said tartly. For everyday, she buys shirtdresses at the Gap. “They cover your backside, but they’re still the Gap. That kind of gives you a visa between the two worlds.”
In its fashion pages, Muslim Girl addresses concerns about fashion by encouraging young readers to mix and match current designs from a variety of sources, and reinforces the message that religion and fashion need not be mutually exclusive.
“We are trying to keep our finger on the pulse of what women want,” Ms. Khan said. Fashion pages, shown alongside columns offering romantic advice and articles on saving the environment, are among the more popular for the magazine’s teenage readers, she said, adding that the magazine’s circulation of 50,000 is expected to double next year.
Aspiring style-setters also find inspiration on retail Web sites like Artizara.com, which offers a high-neck white lace shirtdress and a sleeveless wrap jumper; and thehijabshop.com, with its elasticized hijabs, which can be slipped over the head.
Some women seek out fashions from a handful of designers who cater to them. “I think people like me are starting to see that Muslim women make up a significant market and are expressing their entrepreneurial spirit,” said Brooke Samad, a 28-year-old Muslim woman who designs kimono-sleeve wrap coats and floor-length interpretations of the pencil skirt out of a guest room in her home in Highland Hills, N.J.
“We follow trends, but we do keep to our guidelines,” said Ms. Samad, whose label is called Marabo. “And we’re careful with the fabrics to make sure they aren’t too clingy.”
Today fashion itself is more in tune with the values of Islam, revealing styles having given way to a relatively modest layered look. Elena Kovyrzina, the creative director of Muslim Girl, pointed to of-the-moment runway designs, any one of which might be appropriate for the magazine’s fashion pages: a voluminous Ungaro blouse with a high neck and full, flowing sleeves; a billowing Marni coat discreetly belted at the waist; and a Prada satin turban. Among the more free-spirited looks Ms. Kovyrzina singled out was a DKNY long-sleeve shirt and man-tailored trousers, topped with a hair-concealing baseball cap.
There are Muslim women who choose to cover as part of a journey of self-discovery. In “Infidel” (Free Press, 2007), her memoir of rebellion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali recalls as a girl wearing a concealing long black robe. “It had a thrill to it,” Ms. Hirsi Ali writes, “a sensuous feeling. It made me feel powerful: underneath this screen lay a previously unsuspected but potentially lethal femininity. I was unique.”
But adopting the hijab also invites adversity. A survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations last year found that nearly half of Americans believe that Islam encourages the oppression of women. Referring to that survey, Ms. Hussain, the New York journalist, observed, “Many of these people think, ‘Oh, if a woman is covered, she must be oppressed.’ ”
Still, after 9/11, Ms. Hussain made a point of wearing the hijab. “Politically,” she said, “it lets people know you’re not trying to hide from them.”
Among the young, Ms. Nomani said, “there is a pressure to show your colors.”
“Young people aren’t empowered enough to change foreign policy,” she said, so they adopt a hybrid of modern and Muslim garb, which is “their way to say, ‘I’m Muslim and I’m proud.’ ”
Such bravado has its perils. Jenan Mohajir, a member of the prayer group near the University of Chicago, spoke with some bitterness about being waylaid as she traveled. Ms. Mohajir, who works with the Interfaith Youth Core, which promotes cooperation among religions, recalled an official at airport security telling her: “You might as well step aside. You have too many clothes on.”
What was she wearing? “Jeans, a tunic, sandals and a scarf.”
Ms. Hussain no longer covers her head but has adopted a look meant to play down misconceptions without compromising her piety. “Living in New York,” she said, “has made me want to experiment more with colors and in general to be more bold. I don’t want to scare people. I want them to say, ‘Wow!’ ”
She has noticed a like-minded tendency among her peers. “In the way that we present ourselves to the rest of the world, we are definitely lightening up.”
And, bonus, an post on "the real barrier to communication".
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 02:16 am (UTC)We tried switches with Ted, a rudimentary form of a speech thing, but he didn't seem to get it, and mostly stimmed on it. I'm hoping he will be able to fluently communicate in something, at some point.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 06:04 am (UTC)On the other hand, I've never felt so comfortable in my body as when I was in Morocco, wearing a djellaba. (http://www.aioun.com/original/T.%20Djellaba%20bordeau%20%2051%20E.jpg) ()
no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 02:16 am (UTC)We tried switches with Ted, a rudimentary form of a speech thing, but he didn't seem to get it, and mostly stimmed on it. I'm hoping he will be able to fluently communicate in something, at some point.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 06:04 am (UTC)On the other hand, I've never felt so comfortable in my body as when I was in Morocco, wearing a djellaba. (http://www.aioun.com/original/T.%20Djellaba%20bordeau%20%2051%20E.jpg) ()