In France, ‘Modest Fashion Week’ Models Wear Hijabs, Abayas, and Niqabs

What do all those wives, plural or singular, of rich Muslim men, wear? “Modest fashions” that, ideally, are niqabs that hide everything but the hands and eyes of their wearers. And now there has just taken place a Modest Fashion Week in Paris where models parade — to sashay would be immodest — down the catwalk, one forbidding figure after another wearing everything from hijabs to black abayas and niqabs. And this happened in the middle of Paris, in a country where wearing even just hijabs in schools and other public buildings has been prohibited. Holding this event in Paris, instead of in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, is a sign of Islamic soft power in the heart of Europe. More on this unsettling display can be found here.

Paris has hosted its first Modest Fashion Week, bringing together more than 30 designers from Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria and beyond.

The event, from April 16 to 18, was presented as a celebration of diversity, inclusion and of Muslim women.

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Modest fashion is clothes that cover the arms, legs and often the hair, originally aimed at Muslim women. Today, it’s a booming global market, worth around $400 billion (€340 billion), now targeting a much wider audience, including other religious communities and secular shoppers.

Holding this event in France is significant. The country has spent years debating the place of the hijab and other religious symbols in public life. Headscarves have been banned in state schools for over 20 years. More recently, abayas were banned, too.

The abaya is a loose clothing, covering the body from the shoulders on down. The niqab is a face veil that only leaves slits for eyes. The abaya and niqab are often worn together, for maximum covering.

In many public jobs, visible religious clothing is simply not allowed. That’s laïcité — the French idea that public spaces should stay free of religion.

The event took place at the Hôtel Le Marois, near the Champs-Élysées, with soft, elegant collections inspired by flowers and nature.

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One look, from the brand Asiyam Nour Turbans, showed a model wearing a beret over a headscarf. It was meant to mix French culture with modest fashion.

Özlem Şahir, one of the event’s organisers, described the French capital as one of the leading modest fashion hubs in the world, an ironic claim for a country historically associated with more revealing fashion, such as the invention of the bikini.

Another designer, Fatou Doucouré, founder of Soutoura, told the BBC she felt proud to present her work in Paris. She said she had struggled with wearing the hijab in France before but this event made her feel it was no longer holding her back.

This Modest Fashion Week is another triumph for Islam, “turning oppression into acceptability.” It was a display of, an embrace of, the outward and visible signs of Muslim misogyny. Too bad there were no protesters picketing outside the Hôtel Le Marois, holding up photographs of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian girl who was beaten to death by the Morality Police for not wearing her hijab correctly, or of Noor Almaleki, killed in Arizona by her father for refusing to wear the hijab, two examples of what is a widespread phenomenon: the murder of Muslim girls who do not wear clothes — from the hijab to the abaya-cum-niqab — deemed sufficiently modest coverings by their fathers or brothers, for having “dishonored the family.” Now, because there is money to be made by its fashion industry in catering to Muslim clients and Muslim designers, the French government has allowed this grotesque Modest Fashion Week, a testament to Islam’s misogyny, to be held in the heart of Paris. No good will come of this.

What more must the people of Europe know? Will they just wait, bemoaning the alien and hostile Muslim presence but doing little or nothing about it, as the inexorable demographic conquest of Europe by Muslims proceeds apace? It is not “racist” to oppose your country being taken over by those who have no connection to you, but want only to batten on all the benefits that the welfare states of Western Europe provide, and then, by slow degrees, to take over those states that will then become part of dar al-Islam. It is not “racist” to be alarmed at the crime rates of Muslims, from four to eight times that of non-Muslims. It is not “racist” to want your streets to be safe for single women, for girls, for Jews, to walk on without fear of attack. It is not “racist” to want to stop hordes of Muslim economic migrants from entering your country, and settling deep within, where they cost the indigenous taxpayers tens of billions of dollars annually. And, in this instance, it is not “racist” to oppose Modest Fashion Week.