(Un)Veiling “Tradition”: Fashioning Multifaceted Orhni and Hijab Assemblages in Trinidad

Abstract

Examining sartorial life histories—interviews detailing the entangled biographies of women and their garments—this article attends to the material microscopics of Indo-Trinidadian women’s orhni and hijab veiling practices, dress conventions that circulate as visual markers of idealized femininities vested in mobilizations of Indian, Hindu, and/or Islamic tradition. Complicating facile projections of bounded and timeless essences, women’s narratives highlight the dynamic, hybrid ways in which they have historically “assembled” their outfits, weaving together the diverse material, aesthetic, and ideological threads available to them in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith, and globalized Trinidad. While representations of veiling have facilitated the cordoning-off of ethnic and religious divides, attending to the multifaceted materialities and aesthetics of orhni and hijab assemblages can rip away at the seams that reinforce fictive notions of bounded “culture” and static “tradition” in the Caribbean.