In her tidy Toronto condo, Sadiyya Ali pulls open a drawer in an espresso-coloured tallboy dresser that’s bursting with colourful jersey and silk. Her collection of scarves, she sheepishly confesses, has spilled over to the tufted storage bench at the foot of her bed. She owns dozens, one for every possible outfit in her colour-coordinated wardrobe: cotton-candy-tinted chiffon dotted with a swirling pattern of sequins, textured blue and white jersey, matte black with subtle metal adornments.
Ali, a 24-year-old college student, spends hours each week perusing fashion blogs. But it’s not the pages of Style Bubble or Jak and Jil that she ogles. The looks on mainstream fashion blogs expose a little too much t and a in Ali’s view. Instead, it’s Hijab Style and Hijab Revival that make her daily reading list. The latter sites feature a lot more than the standard-issue black cotton head scarves synonymous with Islam. The women behind them draw inspiration from the runways of Jil Sander and Alberta Ferretti. They lust over $400 designer cashmere scarves – to wrap around their heads instead of their necks. Most notably, these bloggers also steer clear of most matters political or religious. To them, their hijab discussions are all about style.
If there’s a Venn diagram of Islamic fashion and so-called Western fashion, it has more circle overlap than one might think. Jana Kossaibati, the London blogger behind Hijab Style, which averages 2,500 visits a day, says the reactions to her blog are amusing. “It’s 90 per cent good but 10 per cent is a little condescending,” the 21-year-old student says. “Like, ‘Oh my God! Look at these women: They like fashion! Look at what the Muslims did next!” A recent post noted how Ralph Lauren’s fall runway collection, which includes dark, floral-patterned maxi dresses layered over long-sleeve tops, would fit seamlessly into a Muslimah’s wardrobe.
Breathe Hijab, a blog created by Ottawa student Fae Abdulla, 26, features the same sort of collaged images of imagined outfits as its secular counterparts. In one: a pair of Acne jeans, a Michael Kors watch, a Roberto Cavalli ring and a silk scarf from the eco-label Ascension for wrapping around the head and neck. Abdulla only started wearing the hijab two years ago and was a bit apprehensive to start. “I thought, ‘I love fashion. How will I wear the hijab and keep the style that I have?’ “ she says. After stumbling across some Islamic fashion blogs created by young Muslimahs from London to Indonesia, she understood that incorporating the headscarf into her daily look could be more of a stylistic opportunity than a burden. Abdulla was so intrigued by the ways of accessorizing the hijab and colour and textile options that she started her own online forum.
Still, fashionable Muslimahs are still waiting for hijab chic to break into mainstream fashion sites and magazines. Aiysha Malik, a Mississauga, Ont. native who now lives in Cambridge, England, started Hijabs High when she noticed a dearth of “covered women” on the revered street-style blog The Sartorialist. A world traveller, Malik has snapped many of the photos on her site herself, but also has contributors around the world, including in Toronto, Paris, Malaysia and beyond. And it’s not just hijab-wearing women she focuses on: Those wrapped in niqabs, the religious garments that cover a woman’s whole face save for her eyes, are also featured. A post this spring captured a woman with a mauve- and cream-coloured pashmina wrapped around her head and then draped across her face – a far cry from traditional niqabs, which are almost exclusively black, even in non-Islamic countries. “What struck me was that it wasn’t what you typically think of when you cover your face,” Malik remarks. “She’s done it in a really trendy way.”
