Crafting a Presence: How Muslim Designers Are Making Their Mark
Noshaba Khan, a third-year student at FIT, outside of FIT. Photo credit: Imani S. White.
Teen girls pasting together collages from fashion magazines, unrealistic beauty standards, perhaps a line or two from the 2006 film, "The Devil Wears Prada" — this is what I associate with fashion.
For Cassandra Mercedez Tejada, 28, fashion was a lifeline. Like most 13-year-old girls, it was a way to express who she was through dress. She loved reading Seventeen Magazine, clipping out clothing for inspiration later. She loved Barbies but felt Bratz was more fun. She loved how she could customize their hair, outfits, and shoes.
But in high school, she did everything she could to fit in. No more bold colors, flashy accessories, or mismatched patterns; her own creative expression took a backseat.
Fast forward, and Cassandra is now Muslim. She wears hijab and is trying to redefine what fashion can be for herself and others. "Converting to Islam directly correlates to me rediscovering my love for fashion," she said from her Denver home. "I found Islamic modest fashion to be so freeing."
Cassandra is a designer herself, creating under the name Cassandra La Flor, she's focused on Muslim women.
Modest fashion isn't necessarily new. It's also hard to track as the goalpost for what is modest will continue to change over the years. Today, what we call "modest fashion" was once just called fashion, plain and simple. Whether for religious reasons or because of societal standards, women have been dressing "modestly" for millennia.
"In its original form the modest fashion industry was a grassroots movement borne out of a growing generation of young Muslim women wanting to assert their Muslim identity," said Shelina Janmohamed, vice president of Ogilvy Islamic Marketing, a study by The Economist.
But as modest fashion, a term coined in 2017 — and hijab in particular — becomes more ingrained in the cultural landscape of the U.S., hijabis find themselves navigating a pivotal moment in fashion against the backdrop of a deeply politicized identity. Amid hypervisibility, pigeonholing, and tokenization, hijabis are exercising their creative vision and agency through fashion.
Modest Fashion Globally
Clothing designed with hijabi women in mind is the norm in many Muslim-majority countries. Still, in Western countries, specifically the United States, modest fashion — hijab specifically — and the faces that represent it are gaining visibility. Nike released its first sportswear hijab in 2017. Halim Aden became the first hijab-wearing model signed to a major agency (IMG) to walk an international runway. And beyond the world of catwalks and fashion week, there is an influx of hijabi models and influencers populating Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
In 2018, the global modest fashion industry was valued at USD 283 billion and is expected to balloon to nearly $402 billion by 2024. With projections that promising and a demonstrated demand, established companies, independent designers, and creators alike will rush to fill it.
In August 2023, London-based Bengali designer Saeedah Haque, 24, collaborated with Nike to create its first niqab, or Islamic face covering. The Nike by You x Saeedah Haque marked the launch of her modest streetwear collection, including her staple streetwear abaya, a long dress worn by Muslim women. Abayas, like hijab, has been around for centuries. It can be found worldwide and comes in many styles, cuts, and colors. Haque acknowledges as much by stating that her designs aren't a new concept — but a personal, reinvented one.
"The abaya has been worn by Muslim women long before me. This isn't a new concept," she said in an interview with VFILES Lab. "But it's important, as a designer, to show that clothing in a space where it's being celebrated rather than being politicized and policed."
Muslim Designers Navigate Fashion School
Walking around the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City feels like straying into the GEN-Z fashion side of TikTok. Big pants, little shirts, and eclectic shoes are the uniform of every student there. I was on a mission to find the members of the Muslim Student Association on campus.
What does it mean to be a Muslim designer who wears hijab? Did it influence how they conceptualized fashion?
Noshaba Khan, a student at FIT studying fashion and textile design, is obsessed with details. I knew it from the moment I saw her, too. She wore custom jeans hand-printed with Urdu poetry, her hands adorned with henna, for no particular reason. She just liked how it looked.
"I knew I wanted to include my mom and my heritage in my work.” Photo credit: Imani S. White.
"In seventh grade, I was convinced I was going to be a writer," said Khan. "In my mind, that's what God had written for me." Then reality hit, and she realized there wasn't much money in being a novelist, but she still wanted a creative outlet, and that was fashion.
Many hijabis find ways to style their hijab to highlight their individuality — from colors and patterns to how they wrap it. Khan is no different. As she laid out the hijabs she made on the table, she explained how she screen printed them, which is the process of ink-printing images or patterns onto a material through a screen.
The scarves are adorned with flowers, design elements from anime, and Urdu poetry excerpts handwritten by her mom. "I knew I wanted to include my mom and my heritage in my work," said Khan, who is Pakistani.
Noshaba Khan’s project features custom, screen-printed denim with Urdu poetry. Courtesy of Noshaba Khan.
Khan primarily works in textile design and explains that wearing hijab doesn't play a big part in her designs, though people often assume it's the crux of her inspiration and ethos. "I remember when I first introduced Urdu script into my work, people would ask if it was religious or mistake it for Arabic," said Khan with a smile. "I've become a historian, answering questions about my culture." It's something she isn't bothered by.
What matters is her ability to practice her creativity in a way that makes sense to her and no one else. Khan, who served as the president of the Muslim Student Association at FIT, has noticed an influx in hijabis in the fashion design major since her freshman year. "It feels like there's been a surge post-pandemic," she said. "It's where what I like to call the New-York-Fashion-girl-TikTok epidemic began."
One of the new faces on campus is Nozima Ergash-Zoda, 20, from Coney Island, Brooklyn. "It's only my first year, but I feel grateful to be here, to be able to practice what I love."
Nozima knew pretty early on that fashion design was where her heart was. She tried psychology, but it didn't take. She applied twice for the Fashion Institute before getting in, but once she was accepted, she was determined to actualize her creative vision.
"What it comes down to is I want to create a modest fashion line for Muslim women," she said. "That's where I see myself in 5 years inshaAllah [God willing]."
Ergash-Zoda working on her designs at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Photo credit: Imani S. White.
As I watched her meticulously make her way around the mannequin, pinning the loose fabric of her designs, she explained how she became interested in fashion, and it mirrored what Cassandra had said. "I would read Seventeen Magazine and Vogue and not see myself," she said. "I wanted to do something about that."
Nozima, whose family is from Uzbekistan, made it clear her identity plays a part in how she designs. "These colors," she points to the flowy, multicolored sleeve on her dress. "These designs are all from what I saw growing up. It's what my mom wore. It's how our cultural buildings look. And now, it's part of my work."
Design sketches from Ergash-Zoda’s final project. Courtesy of Nozima Ergash-Zoda.
There’s Space at the Table for Muslim Designers
She isn't alone in her cultural identity and familial ties inspiring her work. New Jersey-based Adekemi Savage, 27, credits watching her mother sew clothes for jummah and Eid as she first became interested in fashion. "I gained an appreciation for clothing, watching her create," she said. "I would see her sewing and be in awe of bringing something into existence like that. It was beautiful."
Savage began SAVADÉ, a digital platform and clothing brand, to connect with other Muslims looking for an accessible, modest brand.
That's when Savage decided on her purpose: to create clothing for Muslim women that they felt comfortable and confident in. However, finding additional inspiration proved difficult for her. When she turned to social media and fashion magazines, she saw tall, thin, white women dominating the scene. With minimal sewing knowledge, creating clothes for herself empowered her. "It became an avenue to show up as my authentic self."
Hijabis online and in the industry aren't just redefining it, but they're creating space for more Muslim women to experiment with their fashion. If you open TikTok right now, you're likely to come across countless fashion microtrends: from "croquette" and "bloke-core" to "clean girl," Muslim women are tagging along for the ride.
It's not just a matter of deconstructing stereotypes that confine Muslim women to boxes of oppression or repression, where scarves signify the death of personal autonomy — but redefining how Muslim women and girls present themselves in the world.
"I love knowing there are emo hijabis on TikTok, with their thick eyeliner and ripped jeans, and still showing up unapologetically Muslim," said Savage. "It's something I needed as a kid."
For Warda Moosa, 28, modesty is an important design consideration. When she moved to the U.S. from Dubai at 15, her love for fashion grew. But where modest wares were seamlessly woven into mainstream fashion in Dubai, she saw that piece missing from the picture here — and she saw a market for it.
At New York Fashion Week, she found herself designing on the spot. She saw garments she thought could be easily adapted for hijabi models. "Recreating looks I've seen at Fashion Week is how I start designing," said Moosa. "Recreating these looks helped me tangibly show my passion."
SOMALI BAAN AHAY collection, courtesy of Warda Moosa’s design portfolio.
One of her first collections, SOMALI BAAN AHAY (I AM SOMALI), pulls from her Somali background. "Today [being] Somali resonates with war, terror, and poverty," said Moosa about her inspiration for the line. "There's nothing about the culture, the people, what songs they sing. It's important for me to create a line with pieces of that."
Moosa has also stepped into a consultant role in the industry, advocating for hijabi models, stylists, and designers.
At Fashion Week, she explained to designer after designer the importance of modesty to her and her sister, who was walking in a show. This didn't bother her. "It's a matter of reeducation. Sometimes Islam or the hijab doesn't match what people have seen in the media," said Moosa. "I've spent a lot of time educating and found people more curious than anything."
As Muslim women become more prevalent in the industry, so do their chances of being tokenized or included to check a diversity box. This reduces Muslim women to the scarf on their heads rather than recognizing them as individuals with quirks and idiosyncrasies that are entirely their own. It strips them of their agency to simply exist.
While Moosa says her experiences in the industry have been mostly positive, both have faced intolerance for what Moosa describes as challenging the status quo. "By making the industry so rigid and unaccommodating, designers have profited off the exclusivity they've created," she said. "They don't want to normalize hijabis in the industry, otherwise they lose out on profiting off us."
What is considered fashionable — and beautiful — is often dictated by longstanding sociopolitical norms that have implications.
When Muslim women, especially those who are visible Muslim, carve out space for themselves, either formally or informally, in the industry, it can be subversive. It's taking an apparatus that excluded them for years and forcing it to face you head-on.
By bending the rules of fashion to meet them where they are, regardless of what the industry dictates — they are playing by their own rules.
Moosa is ready to challenge the industry where she can. She sees her business flourishing outside the confines of the fashion industry. "I feel like being a hijabi is my strength as a designer. I feel like it sets me apart from the mainstream," she said. "I don't want the traditional route. I want to make my name on my own terms."
Fashion, Islam, & Sustainability: "We Are Stewards of This Earth"
The fashion industry generates almost 21 billion tons of waste annually and is responsible for nearly 10% of global carbon emissions. Companies like ZARA, H&M, and GAP outsourcing cheap labor to countries like Bangladesh, which saw a groundswell of garment worker protests in 2023, demanding higher wages and safe working conditions.
But recently, Muslim and non-Muslim consumers alike are also looking for brands that reflect their personal beliefs. "Clothing sustainability is growing in popularity with consumers and has also been the theme of many modest fashion events," according to the 2020/2021 State of the Global Islamic Economy Report.
For designers like Mercedez-Tejada, sustainability and ethical practices are at the forefront. She uses eco-conscious materials, supply chains, and upcycling fabrics.
Her view of fashion shifted when the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed in 2013, killing over 1,100 people just outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She remembers watching the coverage from the T.V. in her living room. "Seeing American companies putting profit over the lives of people made me sick. I saw how horrible the [fashion] industry could be in real-time," she said.
In Islam, there's a concept called amaanah, which roughly translates to "trust." It's the belief that people are entrusted to look after, care for, and tend to the earth and all its creation. Mercedez-Tejada has taken this concept to heart and incorporated it into her shopping and her work. "We are meant to be khalifas (stewards) of this earth," she said. "I am deeply mindful about what I buy. To me, fast fashion is the antithesis of Islamic practice."
“It’s Beautiful to Witness Women Who Look Like Me Breaking Stereotypes"
Fashion has many iterations. It signifies everything encompassing an identity — from cultural and class markers to niche interests. At its core, it is a way for people to present themselves to the world, with or without their consent.
The same is true for Muslim designers. It's a way for them to express their personal style. For Mercedez-Tejada and Savage, it's an opportunity to bring Islam to the forefront of their work, where hijab is the main component. While others, like Khan, draw inspiration from personal interests like anime and K-pop.
But hijab isn't a barrier for FIT student Nafisa Ali, 23, who says it pushes her to be more creative in her understanding of fashion. "I felt limited in the beginning," she said, recalling her classmate's discouragement of including hijab in her work. "I took it upon myself to explore modest styling and bring it into our workshops."
Hijabis have brought modest fashion to the forefront of the industry. While there are concerns about tokenism designers and models. There is still cause for celebration. "Seeing hijabis on the runway and in editorial magazines is revolutionary for me," said Savage. "It doesn't erase problems in the industry, but it's beautiful to witness women who look like me breaking stereotypes."