Modest fashion becoming the business

A woman wearing a U.S. flag hijab is pictured during an "I am Muslim Too" rally in Times Square, Manhattan

A woman wearing a U.S. flag hijab is pictured during an "I am Muslim Too" rally in Times Square, Manhattan

Published Mar 4, 2017

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London - Something curious has happened to the fashion

industry in the last few years: So-called modest fashion has started to take

off. Designers and retailers are producing clothing that’s often a little

longer and slightly looser and tends to have a higher neckline.

That’s good news for an eager generation of young women

who want to look great while respecting their religious values.

Burberry, DKNY, and other brands have released special

Ramadan collections, timed to coincide with the Muslim holy month. Uniqlo sells

a line from British designer Hana Tajima described as fusing “contemporary

design and comfortable fabrics with traditional values.” And last month, an

event billed as the first “modest fashion” week was held at the Saatchi Gallery

during London Fashion Week.

Behind this shift in tastes and preferences are a cadre

of amateur designers and bloggers who amassed millions of followers on social

media and grabbed the attention of big brands.

“It’s not like we just started to wear hijab,” said

Mariah Idrissi, 24, who in 2015 became the first person to wear a hijab in an

H&M ad campaign. “We’ve had this industry for a very long time, and they

never really took notice.”

A post shared by D I N A T O K I O (@dinatokio) on Mar 1, 2017 at 12:16pm PST

That seemed to change after bloggers proved they could

attract huge followings.

Dina Torkia, 27 years old, started out posting pictures

of her own clothing designs on Facebook five years ago, but people kept asking

about how to style a hijab. She turned to YouTube, where she showed people how

to create a “volumised” style. In one video, she showed viewers 20 different

ways to tie a scarf.

“Think of it like a haircut,” she said. “People get bored

of their hairstyles, so we get bored of our hijab styles.”

Torkia—known as Dina Tokio to her 1.1 million Instagram

fans and more than half-million YouTube subscribers—blogs about finding clothes

that reflect her faith-based values of dressing modestly. She has released her

own lines and worked with a number of brands, including London high-end

department stores Liberty and Harvey Nichols, as well as French luxury house

Lancôme.

The market has been obvious for years. In 2015, Muslim

women are estimated to have spent $44 billion on modest fashion alone,

according to a Thomson Reuters report. Muslims make up 23 percent of the

world's population, and the Pew Research Center expects the figure to grow to

29.7 percent by 2050.

Religious women—not just Muslims, but Jews and Christians

as well—have long struggled to find clothes that are both modest and trendy.

Rabia Zargarpur, one of the pioneer designers in the modest-fashion world, said

that when she started wearing a headscarf around 2001, she drew styling

inspiration from Erykah Badu, who isn't Muslim. In 2009, Zargarpur opened an

online store selling her own designs, including long-sleeved shirts and tops

that would cover hips.

A post shared by Rabia Z. (@rabiazbrand) on Mar 1, 2017 at 7:16am PST

Zargarpur—or Rabia Z as she’s known—showed off her first

runway collection in 2007 at the Dubai International Fashion Week. Big retail brands

started to get in touch, but she said she thinks they weren’t ready to make the

leap. “The regional stores were super-excited because they knew that it would

sell well,” she said. “But I would go to headquarters, and they would always

hesitate. They said ‘Oh, we’re busy with other projects,’ but I know that it

was the hijab aspect.”

It was around the time Torkia started posting her designs

on Facebook that some of today’s most prominent fashion bloggers started to

express themselves online. Kuwait-based Ascia al-Faraj, 27 years old, started

blogging in 2012 and has quickly become one of the region’s most influential

fashion writers, amassing more than 2.1 followers on Instagram.

Al-Faraj has worked with a series of premium brands, but

her latest collaboration is with Net-a-Porter, the online luxury retailer,

which she first hinted at online while posing with Gucci handbags.

A post shared by Ascia AKF (@ascia_akf) on Mar 1, 2017 at 10:37am PST

Robbie Sinclair, womenswear editor of the

trend-forecasting service WGSN, said that beyond the potential for sales

growth, companies are purposefully trying to stand out by making bold

statements that can veer into the political realm. 

Nike released two ads in February featuring women wearing

headscarves. The company also changed its bio on Twitter to simply read: “If we

can be equals in sport, we can be equals everywhere.” The second targeted the

Middle East and highlighted five female athletes from the region.

Sinclair said it's only a matter of time before more

companies incorporate modest fashion into their collections. “Something's

always just an idea until someone does it,” he said.

It's more than just headscarves. While the event in

London mostly attracted Muslim women, Torkia thinks modest fashion can be for

anyone. “I think we need to take Muslim out of it,” she said. “I’m pretty sure

every religion promotes modesty.”

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