Of Fashion and Musleem Women

So here we go again. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

I was browsing through ASOS website searching for a decent maxi dress this morning. However, the price was out of my reach I suppose (if it's to be transferred to Malaysian Ringgit). The price ranges from 20 pounds to 100 pounds. So if I plan on taking a  20 pounds dress, I'll be spending 100 ringgit approximately, and that is just not affordable for me as a student.

So, I tweeted about how much I want a decent maxi dress (still do!) and how it's hard to find a decent maxi dress in Malaysia. Then, the beautiful Yazmin replied to my tweets, telling me that there are abundant amount of decent maxi dress even in Australia and how ironic it is that Malaysia (which is supposed to be a Musleem country) is lack of these decent dresses to be worn!

Well, Yazmin got a point alright. I do feel it's kinda hard to find a decent dress in Malaysia. Either it's maxi, or just a beautiful blouse, there always seems to be something wrong with it. Somewhere.

For instance, if the length of the blouse is just alright (covers the bottom), then the length of sleeves will be a problem. It's either they'll be sleeveless (which is quite okay to me, as you can easily wear it with a thin jacket/cardigan without sweating as if you're on a 3-miles run), or short-sleeves (which people tend to wear with an inner shirt which is quite sheer sometimes, and it'll stick to the body most of the times).

Have you ever seen something like this in Malaysian blogshops? I don't think so! :/

Women are human beings. They want to be beautiful, they want to feel beautiful. I'm not saying inner beauty is not the MAIN thing that can give us the confidence of beauty, but sometimes, these apparels help certain women to stand up and speak out. 

And yes, abaya is a beautiful piece of clothing. However, being a woman, we want to have variety of clothes. One day, we'd love our hat on, the other day, we feel like wrapping ourselves in a pashmina. 

I'm sure there might be people who read this and say, " Oh, women should only be beautiful in front of her husbands, so and so,". Dear people, it's not that we're trying to expose our aurah, or draw people's attention towards us. It's just that feeling of knowing, we're worth it. It's only fitrah that we want to be beautiful because human beings like beautiful things and Allah himself is The Most Beautiful too. :)

However, the ticket of being beautiful should not lead us, women, to the expose of our aurah. Even if it's tight dresses, or tight leggings, aurah is aurah and that's that! Allah had clearly said in An-Nisa, which part of us should be covered and we, AS MERE, HUMBLE SERVANTS, should always have that in our minds and hearts. 

So, back to Malaysia's fashion trends, it's devastating how the society is used to this kind of fashion (eg. short-sleeves with tight inner shirt) as they assimilate these kinds of apparels we have here in Malaysia with our BASIC NEEDS of covering our aurah. This is why, to me, it's a FARDHU KIFAYAH for someone in fashion retailing, to go into the Musleemah's apparels' area in order to make sure that this trend is stopped as Malaysian women are able to feel beautiful WITHOUT being enslaved in fashion trends.

It is also important for women to know, fashion is not everything. We must wear what reflects us instead of getting too much excited in the fashion trends. Afterall, the fashion industry itself is unoriginal in a way. The designer will always "design" something that is somehow "new" but "recycled". If you can see the fashion trends nowadays are somehow very similar to the 80's, and the pattern will keep on being recycled in the future. So what's important is to always stay true to yourself. :)