"Modern fashion" triumphs in the Muslim world and the West opens the door for it

'Prime fashion', which combines modernity and religious propriety in women's designs, is gaining more and more market share in Islamic countries, and is even gaining a foothold in the West.

This recent phenomenon and still unknown to a large part of the public in the rest of the world is the backbone of the exhibition "Contemporary Muslim Fashions", which opens this Saturday at the De Young Museum in San Francisco (USA). .

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The show recalls how high-end international brands such as Christian Dior, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Valentino and Chanel have at some point explored this field for their Muslim clients, and highlights the strength with which local designers are rising.

"In 2015 some brands started targeting that market and since then the industry has grown a lot. There's a lot of latent demand," explained Reina Lewis, Professor of Cultural Studies at London College of Fashion and exhibition consultant. .

The professor, who has dedicated her last academic decade to the study of fashion in Muslim countries, said that during this time the same complaint was repeated over and over again among consumers: "the design industry ignored them."

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According to Lewis, brands that want to get into demure fashion first need to understand the diversity of the Muslim customer, primarily reflected in different preferences for which parts of the body to cover and how to cover them.

The teacher used as an example the "hijab" to cover the head, which in Malaysia is usually a single piece that covers everything but the face, while Muslim African-American women usually wear something more similar to a turban, which it does not cover their ears or neck.

"In addition to geographical and cultural differences, personality elements also intervene, as in any other human group: among Muslims there are those who like to dress gothic, 'mod', 'casual', etc.", Lewis noted.

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Currently, it is estimated that this type of fashion generates around 44,000 million dollars a year worldwide, whose clients are mostly Muslims, but also Christians and Jews, and even people with no religious affiliation.

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"Uniqlo - the Japanese firm - is a good example," Lewis said. "They partnered with a Muslim designer, Hana Tajima, and created streetwear that they brought to market that was promoted as both modest fashion and comfortable wear for everyone."

"At first they only sold them in Southeast Asia, but now you can find them everywhere, even in stores in London or San Francisco, and they attract all kinds of customers," he explained.

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This trend, however, is not without controversy, and from the perspective of the West there are those who see it as a way to perpetuate the submission of Muslim women to their husbands and to the doctrines of Islam.

"Sometimes people think that what is only a small segment of the Muslim world, the one in which women are forced to dress in a specific way, is something generalized," defended one of the commissioners of the exhibition, Laura Camerlengo.

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"In the vast majority of the Muslim world, women decide how to dress and present themselves to the world," said the curator, although she added that there are examples such as Iran or parts of Indonesia that contribute to the image of general submission.

Perhaps better than any other garment, this controversy is reflected in the "burkini" or full-length swimsuit, also exhibited in the show and which has been the subject of strong public discussion, especially in France, in recent years.

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The explanatory poster that accompanies the garment includes the words of its creator, Aheda Zanetti, for whom the burkini "symbolizes leisure, happiness, fun, physical exercise, and health" and wonders why someone might want to remove something "that has given freedom to women".

"Contemporary Muslim Fashions" can be visited at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, located in Golden Gate Park, from this Saturday until January 6, after which it will move to the Angewandte Kunst Museum in Frankfurt (Germany) .