Mariah Idrissi made history when she became the first Muslim hijab-wearing model to star in an international fashion campaign for H&M.
The advert made headlines across the world and propelled Mariah into the limelight as an influencer and modest fashion advocate
The 26-year-old then caught the attention of Rihanna's Fenty team, who booked her to star in their latest campaign. “I still remember the email, I was in-between management, so I got [it] to my own email address," she tells us, "I was like oh-my-god, I don’t have any representation and I replied saying ‘yeah we’ll get back to you.' I was in shock, I still am."
Through modest fashion young Muslin women such as Mariah have found a way to express their style, while still adhering to their beliefs.
“I feel like modest fashion is just a branch of mainstream fashion and so a lot of the trends just follow what’s going on already, they just add a bit more sleeve or make something more loose-fitting,” she says.
In the last few years global fashion brands from luxury to high street have woken up to the movement, even incorporating the Islamic calendar into their campaigns. Luxury retailers such as Harrods now see the "Harrods Hajj," a seasonal pre-Ramadan spike of affluent Muslim shoppers, as one of their busiest and most important periods.
But Mariah says some people still misunderstand what modest fashion is all about. “Just recently, a lot of messages have come through for me to speak about women taking their hijab off, on places like social media" she says, "I feel like a general mixture of social media and politics combined is making us forget what the hijab represents.”
