Regulating Fashion: Religion, Politics, Law | Parsons School of Design

Organized jointly between Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University and Parsons School of Design (http://www.newschool.edu/parsons), and sponsored by the Parsons MA Fashion Studies program (http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/ma-fashion-studies), Emma Tarlo (Goldsmith’s College, University of London), and Professor Reina Lewis (Chair of Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion), will be in conversation followed by an open discussion chaired by Professor Hazel Clark (Research Chair of Fashion, and Interim Dean, School of Fashion | http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/fashion-school, Parsons School of Design | http://www.newschool.edu/parsons). In this joint session, Emma Tarlo and Reina Lewis explore manifest tensions in the relationship between fashion, religion and the law. Drawing on their recent research on the rise of religiously inspired fashion, they discuss how clothing regulations and norms are currently being re-established and negotiated in complex plural environments where competing regulatory mechanisms and ideas of appropriate body management co-exist. Presenting material on specific micro-environments such as schools, shops and the workplace, Reina Lewis will discuss how secular and religious expectations concerning clothing regulation and bodily comportment are negotiated in public and semi-public spaces in Europe and America. Taking as her starting point some of the new sartorial propositions that have emerged in response to clothing legislation and