From The Daily Beast
In the last few years, a growing community of hijab fashion bloggers has changed the idea of what it means to be a modern Muslim woman.
Many Westerners believe that traditional Muslim dress—and the vague category of “the veil”—is a sign of male oppression and backwardness. Freedom, we are told, is all about heels and lipstick. But the phenomenon of modern Muslim women testing out adventurous new styles on fashion blogs has proven quite different.
Now, Tokio, who’s half British and half Egyptian, has a headscarf and clothing line called Lazy Doll. She’s a contributing columnist for an online Muslim magazine calledAquila. And there’s also New York–based blogger Sabrina Enayatulla, who runs the blog Slice of Lemon (another website for contemporary Muslim women); the Egyptian Dian Pelangi from Dianrainbow, Brooklyn-based half-British, half-Japanese Hana Tajima from Stylecovered, and Canada’s Saman from Makeup and Hijab Styles, just to name a few. What started in 2007 as part of the global blogger boom had peaked by 2009: now, these women are seen as influencers. Many have been summoned by fashion companies to act as representatives, ambassadors, and promoters for different brands.
The media may portray Muslim females as shrouded in black head-to-toe robes, feeding the stereotypical idea that modernism—not to mention fashion—and Islam cannot mix. But, as this crop of popular fashion blogs shows, wearing a hijab can mean a great number of things to a variety of women. Hijab fashion has always been around—but now the Internet has impacted it like never before. “When I started covering, at the age of 13, there weren’t any tutorials or guidelines,” Kanar says. “Girls today have it much easier because they have far more sources of inspiration and they have the possibility to feel beautiful inside and out.”
