Bindi Fashion

As much as I love all the deep philosophical pondering I can pack into my life, I am also a girly girl who has a fondness for fashion and beauty.

If you’ve been a reader here for a while then you may remember that I have a strange fascination for head covering fashion blogs, both Muslim and Orthodox Jewish. I gravitate to them and spend hours looking at fashion blogs that include hijabs and other head coverings. Most recently when I was doing it I realized that I felt like these outward signs of faith mixed with fashion are a way for the ladies in religious communities to bond and come together. I miss that we don’t have that.

Then I thought, well we Hindu ladies have the bindi. And even though I usually wear a small plain bindi as an outward symbol of my faith to avoid being accused of cultural misappropriation (wearing it just because it looks pretty), why shouldn’t we take advantage of the variety of colors and shapes in bindis to make our own Hindu-specific fashion?

Sorry, boys, this post kind of leaves you out. But for the girls, I want to have our own answer to hijabi fashion blogs and so I started playing with Polyvore, a site where you can create dream outfits. I want to create outfits that show how bindis and bangles can be part of ever day wear for Hindus in the west. We can have our western style but integrate the bindi into it. A bindi doesn’t have to be just for going to your cousin’s wedding or dressing up for Diwali.

I’ve been creating like crazy over the weekend with these rules for myself:

Include a bindi that matches the outfit (many were inspired by the bindis themselves)
Include matching bangles
Avoid any leather products
Keep the outfits reasonably modest

Check out my #BindiFashion so far!