Islamic Fashion Part 1- Why Should We Pay Attention?

I am doing a research project, out of personal interest, on Islamic fashion.  What I have found is so fascinating, that I decided to start a series of blog on the topic, in case anyone wants to read up on this later.

Although I spent years doing research in school and 10 years in the beginning of my working career, I have not done any during the past 20 years.  (No need to do the math and try to add my age.  Just say, I’ve been around.)  And man, things have changed!  With internet and google, looking up references and reading materials is just so easy.  There’s no need to move anywhere at all.  In fact, I first started reading up on this literally in bed with my iPad at 5.30 in the morning, before checking the morning news.  It’s just amazing.  Being able to speed read in English is also helpful, I guess. 

Back to the Islamic Fashion, why am I interested?  The way I figure, since Thailand is quite good at fashion design and apparel making and have been trying to get a niche in the global market for years.  Getting into a new market segment that has not been saturated should be a good thing to do.  I look around and find the Islamic fashion fills the ticket.  Not only the potential market is so big because of the huge population, it’s not well understood by most outsiders including the West and the Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese.  What more can we ask for?  A huge market, some with super rich spenders, not too many players!  Perfect.

Since my background on the topic, like most of you I presume, is virtually none, I decided to read up on history, culture, arts, market size, trends, etc.  Once I line up the topics, I figure if I can motivate myself to write what I find, and create a series of blogs.  Please note, these are not research papers by any means.   I do not offer completeness- just to answer my questions on the topic.  I try to provide the links I found though.  But, really, I found everything I based on entirely from google.com.  So, any of you can do it yourself any time.  No magic to it.  Just use the proper key words.  I use very straightforward ones like “Islamic fashion”, “Islamic fashion history”, “Islamic clothing market”, etc.  There are better ones, I’m sure.  You get the picture?

I’m quite impressed at what I found, normally in the first page of the search.  I more or less got 90% of what I was looking for.  Man, research can’t be easier.  Those were the days that we had to go to the library, looked up the cards and went to the shelves on various floors.  Start talking like an old timer, which I am.

Well, this is supposed to be an intro or a teaser.  We’ll get into the history of it in our next blog.  Stay tuned, if you like.  Or forget it,  Just don’t say I didn’t offer you the thrill to share into this fascinating topic with me.

Cheers.