Kate and Amal embrace fashion's inspiring new trend: modesty.

“I’d go on Asos to buy an maxi skirt or a dress," she says, "but it would have a slit in it, it would be half see-through, or it would be short and the front long at the back.”

So, seeing a gap in the market, Nafisa and her sister Selina decided to team up and create their own fashion website, Amaliah.

The Bakkar sisters welcome all shoppers of Amaliah into an online Muslim community, a safe space for discussion and support for those who may struggle with more than just their fashion choices.

"Amaliah is also about fundamentally having a place for a community. It’s not that there isn’t choice out there for a Muslim woman," reads the website.

"It's that when you look at mainstream fashion sites and look at how models are styled, it can give the idea that we just don’t fit in or belong. A lot of what Amaliah is about is having a platform which really identifies with the core of being a Muslim woman, almost feeling ‘at home’ when you’re on our site."  

One of Melbourne's coolest bloggers @hijabrevivalofficial will be in the house or should we say caravan on Saturday. Who is this style icon and how is she so awesomely dressed all the time? Shes going to show us in her style session so dont miss it. We need a halal drink aka coffee to cope with all this goodness!! Image @hijabrevivalofficial #hootd #modestfashion #modestycaravan A photo posted by Modesty Caravan (@modestycaravan) on Feb 29, 2016 at 7:42pm PST

 

Across the pond to the US, and the grass-roots Muslim fashion scene is also beginning to shine.

So much so, actually, that a new word can been coined - 'Mipsterz', short for 'Muslim Hipsters'. They are the young, cool, and fashion-forward; reinventing what it is to dress as a Muslim youth.

 

Instagram celebrity Noor Tagouri is the queen of the Mispterz.

The 21-year-old has shot to fame after her goal to be the first female news anchor to wear a hijab on American television became a viral movement, even scoring its own hashtag: #LetNoorShine.

Her wardrobe strikes a chord somewhere between Rihanna and Beyonce, with her hijab often worn in quirky and cute ways. Young, modern, and fashion-obsessed, Noor is one of the faces of emerging modest fashion.

 

Closer to home, three Australian designers have set their sights on the Muslim fashion market, submitting their collections to the recent Indonesian International Islamic Fashion festival.

Hanadi Chehab, Amalina Aman, and Eisha Saleh have crafted beautiful and modest clothing ranges that they hope will inject some local flavour into the fashion festival. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, and is becoming a hub for up-and-coming designers.

"We've got great skills in this country to produce clothing," says designer Eisha Saleh, from Chester Hill.
"It's a growing market and I think everybody wants a piece of it," she says.

 

Everyone DOES want a piece of it, proven by the growing number of non-Muslim designers dedicating their designs to modest dressing.

New York designer Chelsea Goldman, of label CF Goldman (stocked at high-end boutique Opening Ceremony in Manhattan) has made a conscious move to make her new collections more modest.

“I’m not like ‘ok, I’m creating modest fashion.’ I think it’s personally what I find attractive," says Chelsea. "I think there’s a quietness in it, which is interesting."

After surviving the early 2000's, in which hipster jeans, flimsy camisoles, and miniskirts reigned supreme, it's possible that the non-Muslim female community is just as fed up as their Muslim counterparts with skimpy clothing.

 

We are ready to cover up.

Midi skirts, ankle-grazing culottes, and slimline dresses are replacing the sliced and diced fashion of previous years, where flashing belly, legs, boobs, side boobs - side butt! - was quickly becoming the norm.

The aforementioned style queen (and actual future Queen) Kate Middleton continues to inspire, leading a recent article from fashion website Popsugar dedicated to modest dressing.

"...we thought we'd switch gears for a moment and talk about the ladies who actually like to cover up. The ones who dress modestly on both the red carpet and in their everyday lives, proving that it doesn't take a crop top to make you sexy — sometimes, all you need is crew-neck dress and an unmatched amount of confidence to turn heads."

 

 

Muslim, Middleton, or otherwise; the desire for modest clothing is clearly a burgeoning space in the fashion industry.

Whilst it seems crazy that for Muslim women it has taken this long to be catered do as a fashion audience, the new faces of the modest fashion scene are inspiring a whole new wave of modest dressing designs. And the rest of the world seems to be following suit.

Once upon a time, it was revolutionary to take your clothes off. Like Jean Shrimpton and her 1960's minidress, shedding clothes meant shedding the trappings of what it was to be a 'lady': repressed, owned, with ridiculous standards of perfection.

But in 2016, it is revolutionary to put your clothes back on. Women don't want, or need, to be under constant scrutiny by the male gaze. Modest dressing demands a personal privacy that seems to be under attack in the modern world.

Modest dressing is infiltrating the world of fashion, and we for one are cheering.