Arabic fashion a hit in Western markets

Arabic fashion is taking over traditional Western bastions as design labels wake up to the high spending power of this largely ignored market.

At Harrod’s in London, for example, fashion designer Hind Beljafla’s abayas are now on sale, available to tourists and residents alike.

The store started selling abayas by Beljafla’s DAS Collection in June, a month after Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund bought the landmark store, Bloomberg reported.

“Muslim women are like any women around the world: they love fashion and love shopping,” Beljafla, 24, was quoted as saying.

Together with her 26-year-old sister Reem, she uses splashes of color, embroidery and even leather and metal studs on the plain black abaya.

“DAS arrived at Harrods a few weeks ago and has been performing well and receiving a lot of interest from our customers,” said Helen David, the store’s Womenswear General Merchandise Manager. DAS, whose designer pieces sell for as much as $5,000 (Dh18,366), counts members of the ruling families in the Gulf among its regular clientele.

The label is in talks with Harrods to put on sale a new collection in 2011, which it hopes will cement the brand’s international appeal. “As long as you are covering the body, as long as you are conservative in the way you dress, why not be fashionable?” Beljafla said.

Billion-dollar market

Fashion houses in Milan and Paris are waking up to the commercial potential for Muslim women’s clothing that respects religious values and sets new standards for style.

The global Muslim fashion industry would be worth $96 billion if half of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims spend just $120 a year on clothing, according to French Fashion University Esmod in Dubai.

“High-end designers such as Hermes and Gucci are also trying to break into the Muslim market with scarves and other products,” Tamara Hostal, director of Esmod Dubai, was quoted as saying.

Four years ago, Christian Dior SA had one store in the Middle East, in Dubai. It now has ten, including outlets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain.

Last summer, John Galliano was among 21 designers who participated in show in Paris, displaying made-to-measure abayas worth up to $10,000.

Saks Fifth Avenue, which hosted the event, then put designer ready-to-wear abayas on sale for as much as $12,000 at its stores in the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Jeddah.

The abayas are displayed alongside designer evening gowns on the women-only floor of a shopping mall in Riyadh’s glass skyscraper, the Kingdom Center.

At the top end of the market, Saudi princesses sometimes buy 15 to 20 evening gowns for as much as $20,000 each after ordering Saks to bring a selection of the latest Paris and Milan collections to their palaces, store manager Mohammed Nafisa told Bloomberg.

They want abayas by the same designers to match.

“They normally buy an outfit to be used only once at an evening reception,” which is an all-female gathering, he said.

Clients have asked DAS to make abayas to match the colour of their designer bags and high heels by brands such as Christian Dior, Hermes, Channel and Gucci “because they will be wearing the abaya in public where they cannot show a dress that would match with their accessories,” Beljafla said.

Paris-based Jean-Claude Jitrois, who has made leather clothes for celebrities including French rock musician Johnny Hallyday, designed a silk black abaya with hand-woven leather embroidery and Swarovski Crystals for the Hotel George V show.

He has since made abayas for several Saudi princesses as well as a collection of 40 for sale at Saks Fifth Avenue.

International appeal

But outside the region there is a huge market, too, taking in Muslim-populated countries in Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa and North America.

The Islamic Fashion Festival started in 2006 in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta and expanded to Dubai in 2008, with more than 200 designers participating.

Dato Raja Rezza Shah, chairman of the IFF, said he wants to establish the three cities as the Islamic fashion capitals of the world, just as London, Paris, New York and Milan are for Western labels.

Turkish firm Hasema sells full-body Islamic swimwear dubbed the burqini after the Afghan burqa, designed to allow Muslim women to swim while retaining their modesty, in more than 30 countries.

While some burqinis are black, others come in bright colours. The burqa is a robe that covers the entire body and includes a mesh over the eyes, while the burqini, like the abaya, leaves the face exposed.

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