Interview Exercise: Stranger's Fashion Choice

I had originally planned to find a Moroccan or Muslim individual but came across difficulties in time constraints and non-response. I emailed the Muslim Students Association asking for volunteers who would be willing to sit down for an interview but got no response so I decided to instead to do the 'casual sitdown' method.

I went to Odegaard's By George cafe and found an individual sitting at one of the tables on Friday afternoon (May 18th) around 4:00 pm. It was pretty shaded in the building like most days and there were almost nobody there so I talked to the person who was available and conducted the interview and got permission to digitally record the conversation.

My interviewee's name is Yunlin Zheng (who was eating some snacks and waiting to meet up with a friend at the time) and she happened to be a 20 year old undergraduate student here at UW who was born in China and currently lives in Issaquah. She's Christian and holds a moderate political position. She's currently a fulltime student but she works a side job at a cafe in downtown Bellevue.

The introductory question I posed was where she situated herself in youth culture here in the US. She responded, "I'm not a party-er. I work hard. I do activities with my church."

The main questions I asked focused on choice in fashion, because I wanted to do some modeling for interviews in Amsterdam. Second question was what clothes she was wearing and why she was wearing them. She responded, "I'm very casual. I'm not trendy, I wish I was (here I laughed lightheartedly and she smiled) I'm wearing a t-shirt and a zip-up because it's comfortable and clean. It's what I usually wear. I wear the same kinds of clothes - jeans, t-shirt with something over it. Because it was warm this morning I wore something lighter."

Third question was whether any of the items worn had personal value or religious/cultural value. Her green sandals that she pointed to underneath the table were from her dad. Her dad had recently passed away. This came as a shock and surprise so I offered my condolences and she thanked me for them. I took a brief tangent and asked about how it happened and she replied it was due to liver cancer a year ago. An interesting quote is she said, "It's different than when I get my own things."

I was curious and asked where she bought her clothes. Her zip-up was from China, her t-shirt was from Nordstrom Rack, and her jeans were from GAP. I found that to be a very ecclectic collection of sources - which may reflect upon her cultural background as well as attitude towards fashion. Here I hope next time when I ask questions like this to do more probing and asking what each place she buys clothes means to her. This will be helpful for making inferences.

My fourth and final question related to Buruma's quote where I asked my interviewee her reaction to the statement that religious attire is often worn more for a personal statement than for religious purposes. She replied, "I think you can wear whatever you want as long as you believe in it. I know some people who wear crosses just because it is trendy not because they actually believe in their religion. Like the Muslim hijab for example, people who wear it and are Muslim that's fine but if I wore one that would be wrong."

Overall I found that answer to be particularly interesting. To her, it seems that the meaning religious attire worn for individuality is more along the lines of trend and is separate from religious affiliation. Recently, the response that Irina got from her friend Zak sheds some light that trend is definitely a big aspect. A main difference it is people of the Muslim faith wearing it as a trend. So I hope to continue defining our research focus, and see how much of the dress is making a statement about their own religion/cultural identity within society and how much is more for trends or associations that are largely commercial. And who knows maybe those two categories turn out to be really not all that different.