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With four “official” seasons (fall, spring, resort, and prefall) and several arbitrary ones in between, the fashion calendar is pretty much impossible to keep up with. Even when you feel like you've finally figured out your wardrobe, that period is over, and there's a whole new round of trends to account for. And for Muslim women who dress modestly, there’s also Ramadan to consider.

For the Muslim community the month of Ramadan is the holiest time of the year. It involves 30 days of prayer and fasting, from dawn until sundown, followed by a nightly break-fast meal. It also marks a significant moment in the conservative fashion calendar, according to designers and boutique owners that serve this customer. "Ramadan is a time of both spirituality and celebration," said Maha Abdul Rasheed, the founder of Bambah, a boutique in Dubai that specializes in vintage and vintage-inspired ready-to-wear. "Muslims gather with family and friends (including non-Muslim friends) every evening for Iftars, when the fast is broken. These create a highly social season in Dubai: People get together, whether they practice Ramadan or not. There’s a different outing every day, and ladies love to dress up for it."

A report from Racked detailed just how varied the wardrobing scenarios can be during the Islamic holy month, as well as during other religious holidays observed by Muslims. According to Abdul Rasheed, women in Dubai (which is considered by many the fashion capital of the Middle East), see Ramadan, specifically, as an opportunity to show off their unique style, within the parameters of their faith.

"Ramadan is not just about wearing the traditional black abaya," she explains, referring to the robelike garment worn by many observant Muslim women who opt to dress modestly, as it's meant to expose only the head, feet, and hands. "Although it still meets the modest criteria, brands and consumers alike are having a lot of fun coming up with new styles and silhouettes that are unique from the traditional black dress—ladies are very creative and colorful with their Ramadan wardrobe."

She notes that Muslim women often build entire wardrobes specifically for Ramadan, which has caused the Islamic holy month to become its own independent season for fashion trends. Though this time for fast and prayer calls for more conservative dress than what's expected during other periods of the religious calendar, there's no mandate on color, pattern, or detail. "Our Ramadan collection is usually more conservative, so we focus on loose styles with longer hems and sleeves," says Abdul Rasheed. "We use a lot of linens, light colors, and metallic fabrics to add richness. We add embroideries and embellishments to further accentuate the dress and make it uniquely attractive in a modest way." This year midi lengths, metallics, and bell sleeves have stood out as big trends among her customer base.

London- and Dubai-based The Modist, a luxury e-retailer that launched this spring as a Net-a-Porter for the modest set, has noticed a similar gravitation toward fun, expressive style among its customer base during Ramadan. "For women who celebrate it, it's their version of the holiday season, so their shopping trends shift, and they really go all out," says Sasha Sarokin, the company's buying and fashion director. "They want things that are even more statement-making than what they would buy at other times of the year because this is really the month to pull out all the stops in terms of having fun with your look—buying gorgeous caftans, opulent jewelry, and amazing shoes and showing it off to your friends, like we all would."

"Ramadan is really a cherry on the cake [as a buyer], because we get to buy for a certain segment of our women, the women who celebrate Ramadan, who are going all out in terms of [their wardrobe], the fun and the fabulous and the statement-making," Sarokin adds. "They're the kind of things I would probably usually edit out in favor of daily looks."

For its first Ramadan in business, The Modist released an exclusive capsule of caftans, tapping designers like Adam Lippes, Osman, and Mary Katrantzou to collaborate on the design. (The campaign starred none other than Halima Aden.) That collaboration, in turn, bridges the gap between Western and international style sensibilities, in a way, and improves understanding about what a consumer wants and needs out of her wardrobe for this time, according to Sarokin. What's more, trends that you see on the runway—opulent fabrics, jewel tones, retro prints—pour over into the pieces women are shopping for during Ramadan, she observes. "We consider that a groundbreaking practice, really, because no international retailer has really taken a position on that," the buyer concludes. "We plan to do so every year."

In the U.S. some brands see basic pieces, like long-sleeve, solid-color maxidresses, flying off shelves during Ramadan, since these staples allow for ample styling opportunities (and for flexibility with schedule) without much effort. "[During this period] a lot of Muslims spend a lot of time in prayer going from work to dinner to the mosque to Iftar," says Ibtihaj Muhammad, who may be best known as the Team USA fencer who made history last summer as the first athlete to compete in the Olympics while wearing a hijab. She's also the founder of the affordable modest-wear retailer Louella. "For us [it helps] to be able to have a piece of clothing or this one piece of clothing that kind of encompasses so many different things within it."

Muhammad and her siblings launched Louella in 2014 because they felt there was a significant gap in the market for affordable, stylish conservative wear. "There wasn't anyone producing fashion-forward modest clothing for millennials, for the young woman who wants to be fashionable but who also wants to adhere to her faith," she explains. "That's really what inspired me and my sisters to start the company: We were struggling to find modest dresses—long-sleeve maxidresses in particular. When we did find them, they were often from overseas retailers."

So Muhammad decided to make the clothing what she was shopping for—and, sure enough, those very ankle-skimming garments are some of Louella's best-selling pieces during Ramadan. "You can throw a vest over it, you can throw a jean jacket over it, you can change the color or style of hijab to kind of—it's wearing one item a bunch of different ways," she adds. To her, Ramadan style is all about finding something that's "really easy to wear." Though the maxidresses are a consistent hit with Louella's audience, Muhammad notes that the brand also sells a lot of formalwear during this period, in anticipation of Eid, the three-day celebration that marks the end of the month of fasting. "People don't want to wait until the last minute to buy their dress for the big holiday," she explains. "That's our major holiday."

The Olympic athlete may have had to start her own fashion label because she wasn't seeing her needs met by mainstream retailers in the U.S., but Western companies are wising up to the business opportunity that is a modest consumer: A piece in Forbes from this earlier year dubbed this market "the next big thing" for fashion retail, citing a Reuters report titled "State of the Global Islamic Economy" that showed how Muslim shoppers spent around $243 billion on clothing in 2015—$44 billion of that going toward modest wear. The study concluded that the figure is expected to increase by over 50 percent by 2021.

Fashion brands all over the price spectrum—from Dolce & Gabbana and DKNY to Uniqlo—have been wising up to this underserved demographic and have started producing collections specifically targeted at Muslim consumers, oftentimes timed to Ramadan. These attempts by non-Muslim brands to speak to what they consider to be a very valuable consumer aren't always executed in the best way, as one writer argued in response to Mango's 2016 Ramadan offering, which garnered a lot of attention last year, for Refinery29.

In a statement provided to Glamour, a spokesperson for the Spanish retailer explained that it has a department dedicated to "special collections" that has worked to "satisfy and cover the daily need of [consumers in Arabic countries] in their daily activities as well as the leisure ones." Because events like Ramadan and Adha are "very important dates on the Muslim calendar," the Spanish retailer has been designing capsules for consumers that observe those holidays for about a decade. These are meant to encompass various dressing needs that observant women have throughout the month—outfits for prayers, as well as look for iftars, ranging from relaxed caftans and leggings to fancier embellished and lace items.

Abdul Rasheed, though, is impressed with how Western and non-Muslim brands have been acknowledging and interpreting this type of dressing: "The pieces that I’m seeing from local and international designers are breathtaking," she says, highlighting The Modist's work, as well of that Dolce & Gabbana and others in the luxury space. "These retailers have elegantly connected styles from the West to traditions and trends from the rest of the world, specifically Dubai," she adds. "[The modest trend] is wonderful for the Muslim and Jewish communities because that's how we dress," concurs Muhammad. "Those are the things that we would like to buy. It's awesome that that's where the pendulum is [moving] in fashion, because I do think we return to certain looks and trends, so it makes it easier for [modest dressers], specifically, because there are more options."

Outside of expanding product offerings, there's been a slow but steady move toward Muslim visibility in the Western fashion industry. Brands like H&M and Nike have featured models wearing hijab in marketing campaigns—although these ads are often met with pushback from some. Aden was one of the standout models on the fall ’17 runways, rocking her headscarf down the Yeezy, Alberta Ferretti, and Max Mara catwalks; this month she's on the cover of Allure. "Now the industry is celebrating women across the board, from all different regions, all different backgrounds, all different walks of life," the 19-year-old told the magazine. "That’s something we need to celebrate."

Source: glamour.com