Chic Hijab: A New Take On Fashion For Muslims
Posted December 9, 2011
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Photo: Ikhlasul Amal (flickr)
Colorful scarves in a shop in Indonesia.
Rosemary’s Note: This story was produced in the Indiana University School of Journalism class Muslims in the Media. Instructor Ammina Kothari asked her students to report a story about some aspect of Muslim life. Over the next few days we’ll be sharing a few of those pieces with you. This is the first.
Author: Erin Walgamuth
Delicately draped with lavish embroidery, the colorful textiles of Muslim women’s hijabs have become more than just a statement of religion in the past ten years. More women are putting their own stylistic touches into Muslim dress.
“Chic hijab” melds fashion and religion in that it allows women to maintain modesty while dressing fashionably. The elegant tapestry is twisted and tied into eccentric knots that require time, patience and an eye for fashion.
Mariam Sobh began wearing hijab when she was eight years-old. While she started with a more traditional hijab, she used her eye for fashion to incorporate her own style with her modest dress.
The mother, practicing Muslim and editor-in-chief of hijabtrendz.com considers her style to be a toned-down version of modern hijab fashion. Sobh, who isn’t into extravagant techniques and knots and pins that many young hijab wearers like, tends to wear wrap scarves in various colors and the triangle hijab with a pin to hold it back.
Like many twentieth-century hijab wearers, she considers her colorful style to be chic and modern while maintaining modest coverage. It is Sobh’s attention to fashion and her own stylistic touches that ease her connection with non-Muslims, inviting curiosity and appreciation rather than negativity or otherness.
Like other women, many Muslim women are preoccupied with consumer culture. They have a desire for more contemporary modest dress that combines their sense of individuality with their Islamic beliefs and values.
Hijab As Identity
Emma Tarlo, a British scholar who examined chic hijab in England, explains in her book, “Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith,” that hijabs are not just simple pieces of cloth; rather, they are symbols of identity and otherness. Moreover, she notes that Muslim women find themselves in a double bind when dressing in hijab. They must pull from both mainstream, non-Muslim fashion influences of the West as well as traditional Muslim aesthetics to embody “their complex, multiple and hybrid identities.”
“Certainly many Muslim women talk about hijab in terms of a rejection of ‘Western consumerism’ and beauty ideals,” said Tarlo. “At the same time most still want to look attractive and do not want to be seen simply as a walking symbol of piety.”
Rabia Zargarpur, a Dubai-born New York designer and practicing Muslim, began her fashion career designing chic hijabs after converting to Islam. Unable to find clothes that expressed her fashion ideals and personal values while still upholding her Islamic beliefs, she began catering to the needs of her fellow Ummah members.
“There’s just hundreds of thousands of them out there, just like myself, struggling in the sense that they don’t see anything wrong in dressing stylishly as long as it’s modest and conservative,” said Zargarpur in an interview with CBS.
She and many other designers have been at the forefront of a trend that is on its way to the US: chic hijabs. This modern, modest fashion is allowing Muslim women to practice their faith while blending into the “Western” culture of dress.
Market Growing Online
The increased demand for dress that combines Islamic values with style and fashion has pushed local designers online, accessing a more global market. The Internet, in this sense, is used as a tool for networking, sharing and spreading ideas about stylish Islamic dress among people all across the world.
Over the past decade, the number of websites targeting consumer goods at Muslims in the Western market has substantially increased. Websites like hijabtrendz.com, hijabstyle.co and welovehijab.com are all examples of outlets where Muslim women can share their experiences.
With access to a world of fashion at the click of a mouse, Muslim women are able to purchase “ready-made” hijab outfits or find inspiration for their style by what other hijabi women are wearing across the globe.
“Whether it’s how to put on a new style or what outfits look good, more women are able to find tutorials and tips,” said Sobh. “In the past people waited for friends to come from overseas and hope they found something that suited their taste and style. But now they can pick it out themselves.”
Chic Hijabs Change Perceptions?
Though not yet sold on the mainstream market, chic hijabs could become the norm for many Muslim women, and could help to change the way Americans perceive Muslim women and Islam as a whole.
“With this more modern look, hopefully Americans will see the similarities between the way Muslim women dress and people of other faiths that have similar requirements,” said Sobh. “With hijabi fashion, people will begin to be more accepting because they will be able to relate in a fashion way.”
The main reference point for religious understanding of Islamic dress is found in the Quran, the Muslim sacred text believed to be the direct word of God as revealed to the Prophet Mohammed. The Quran serves as a sort of guideline for modest Muslim dress.
“There are always those few out there who will say ‘this isn’t the way we’re supposed to dress, we aren’t supposed to draw attention to ourselves’,” said Sobh. “The whole point of being modest is to go about your day inconspicuously, but if there’s a specific guideline for what you can wear, it’s just that: a guideline. You can still make it look nice; it doesn’t have to look old and frumpy.”
Sobh pointed out that even non-Muslims like J.Lo have been spotted wearing a headscarf. While the styles have been targeted toward young practicing Muslims, some controversy has arisen about non-Muslims wearing the hijabi fashions. Sobh doesn’t see a problem with other women wearing the “look” for fashion, saying it brings back “a sort of feminine mystery” that’s been lost in our society.
“People are adapting, and that’s why I think more and more girls, young women and teenagers are excited and interested to wear hijab. They see that it doesn’t mean they have to change their lives,” said Sobh. “They can be who they are and still be modest.”
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Rosemary Pennington Program Coordinator for Voices and Visions is a graduate student in the School of Journalism at Indiana University.
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Actually you can only be Modest by Being Modest. A
vane woman will still be vane with the Hijab if she is still TRYING TO BE WHO SHE IS. The hope is that the Hijab will ignite a desire inside of her to change on the inside.
Modesty is an interesting thing. Does it mean a) avoiding actions or an appearance that arouse men's sexual desire? Or, b) not drawing attention to oneself at all? If the latter, Muslim women living in Western integrated communities and wearing the hijab, niqab, or burka are not modest: they are drawing attention to themselves. Which, by the way, I have no problem with.
I live in a Western city and wear baggy, loose-fitting long beige pants, loose-fitting T-shirts, and no make-up. Although not dressed in a niqab or burka, I believe I dress very modestly...for my culture. I don't draw attention to myself. I don't wear clothing that arouses men's sexual desire.
Modesty is contextual.
The article would be much improved with a couple photos of traditional, and chic!
I find the Indian style scarf relaxed & attractive. The Muslim often while a pretty scarf, seems tense and an "in your face" presence. So a shift to more integrated look, could be great as a way to keep the faith while bringing a different feel to it. Being modest can be done fashionably.
I've never been able to pinpoint what it is - but have heard the comment from others too. A tighter wrap? Less color? More self-awareness of it as standing out, while Indian women, it seems part of their flow. So interesting article on something to keep an eye out for. Hope you decide to add some photos!!
as a hijabi muslim in asia, I love to see this post.
nice post!
I find it silly that some Muslims are confused about how anyone could wonder why any woman would decide to dress according to the laws dictated by a mythical figure and/or backwards cultural precepts. Innocent inquiry should not be falsely grouped on one side of a convenient dichotomy that sets non-believers against Muslims. I am not anti-Islam any more than I am anti-Christian, and I believe the idea that Americans, or anyone for that matter, who ask questions about the dissemination of preference to a certain religious moral code -- by a University-sanctioned blog, no-less -- are exercising their first amendment rights.
Though these new stylish hijabs may be pretty, they represent a repressive, misogynistic culture that we, as students at a liberal university, should be attempting to surpass. I dislike the use of the words "Islamic values" and "modesty" in this sense, because religion is being used to excuse the concealment of femininity, which I believe to be truly beautiful. If wearing a hijab is truly a sign of modesty, are all other women who choose not to wear a hijab somehow immodest, vulgar, or unclean? I really stress that in liberal society, we should question what anyone of ANY faith defines as modesty.
"Sobh doesn’t see a problem with other women wearing the “look” for
fashion, saying it brings back “a sort of feminine mystery” that’s been
lost in our society."
- The reason we've "lost" our sense of "feminine mystery" is because our society is far more liberal, and far more respecting of women and femininity. Are we to now regress closer back to a state of stronger patriarchy to appease the religious? I ask this question in sincerity, because I was astonished at some of the messages being sent by this woman.
I don't think our society today has respect for women at all. Look at a beer commerical, car magazine, or episode of any tv show on E network. Listen to the lyrcis of the number one hip hop song out right now. By being dressed in a modest way others are required to judge me for who I am, not how sexy I look. Hijab is about self-respect. Islam requires both men and women to dress in a modest way. Just my thoughts.
Is it possible that Western media depicting scantily-clad young women AND religious traditions that require women to cover every part of their bodies and even their faces in dark, monocolored fabric sexualize women?
In Western media, women's sexual attributes are emphasized; in conservative Muslim countries, every part of a woman's body is considered sexual, and therefore, covered. Both hyper-sexualize women.
As a Californian woman, I grew up riding horses, swimming in the Pacific ocean, acting in school plays, attending school dances, climbing trees, playing on baseball teams, hiking mountain trails and competing in academic competitions. I wore t-shirts and loose-fitting jeans, two-piece bathing suits, theatrical costumes, baseball uniforms, ball gowns, and hiking shorts. I hate Western media that continually portrays young women in short skirts, stiletto heels, and low blouses with cleavage in order to sell products. That's not me, nor most of my women colleaugues, girlfriends, sisters and female relatives. I also hate the idea of having to wear a burka or niqab: swimming in the ocean, playing baseball, acting in plays, climbing trees would be nearly impossible.
The hijab, on the other hand, is lovely. One would certainly be able to do most things in a hijab (except, perhaps, swim and play non-Muslim parts in school plays).
"By being dressed in a modest way others are required to judge me for who I am." I don't know that that's true. It depends on what you mean by "modest ways." For some men, a woman can never dress modestly enough.
There are some streets in Cairo, Egypt where women in full-niqab are harrassed and even physically assaulted. Whereas, as a young woman, I wore two-piece bathing suits (not bikini, exactly) on the beach in Calfornia, and, for the most part, was not harrassed. It should be fairly obvious that modesty is contextual: a female surfer wearing a tight body suit or even a bikini, in a culture in which female bikinis and male briefs are the norm, is equally likely to be respected for her surfing skills and who she is as a human being as a "modest" Muslim girl in Turkey wearing the hijab. Likewise, my knee-length, loose beige shorts were considered sufficiently modest for my male hiking companions. From their treatment of me, I consider that they "judged me for who I am."
In American society, where there is frequently found much animus toward Islam, the wearing of a hijab in public additionally serves as a power statement of high self esteem and self confidence. When the wearer's comportment matches 'the look' , an unmistakable message is conveyed.
I agree. In the West, for some Muslim women, wearing the Hijab may be less about modesty (after all, the hijab draws attention to her), and more about identity. Muslim women in hijab stand out.