Paris Modest Fashion Week is no antidote to Islamophobia

Paris hosted its first-ever Modest Fashion Week. And across the board, from the brands promoting their Muslim-friendly designs to the hijabi influencers flown out to promote, it seems to have been lauded as a success for inclusion and progression.

However, there’s a sobering hypocrisy that bubbles just under the surface of this headline-grabbing affair. Namely, the fact that Paris, the host city, also happens to be the capital city of a country whose politics still actively discriminates against and criminalises overt expressions of Muslimness.

That’s right: on the one hand, wielding this celebration of modest fashion, whilst on the other hand, subjecting women wearing varying degrees of (Muslim) modest dress to bans, fines and prosecution. To this day in France, niqabs remain illegal, and hijabs are banned in schools or for anyone delivering a public service, i.e. teachers and firefighters. French athletes are prohibited from wearing the hijab when representing the country during the Olympics, and public places like beaches and swimming pools routinely ban women in burkinis from entering.

This hypocrisy is not mere oversight. It’s built into the very irony that underpins the modest fashion industry as a whole - that when there’s money to be made, suddenly diversity looks like an attractive proposal. After all, there’s no money to be made from the hijabi girls fighting to cover at school or the niqabi women wanting to cover their faces for religious reasons. But a covered model on a runway, dripping in designer couture, is another matter entirely.

The Muslim pound is a lucrative and growing section of the consumer market, worth billions globally. As such, brands and corporations have quickly learned that paying even surface-level homage to the aesthetics of Muslimness can drive huge profits and open up a whole new customer base. Think hijabi mannequins in Primark or Eid edits in H&M; date-scented, cardamom-encrusted body butters from Lush or Suhoor-ready makeup kits from MAC.

Every Ramadan, all the major supermarkets hang out their Ramadan decorations and display their biggest sacks of rice and vats of oil. Every skincare advert will have a token hijabi, every online fashion retailer includes a model with a covered head.

Even Christmas adverts these days include at least a glimpse of a Muslim-looking family.

In many ways, we are more visible than ever. After all, unlike a decade ago, it’s no longer a shock to see a Muslim on TV. However, has any of this made any material difference to our lives as Muslims in the West? Have the covered heads of high street mannequins made Muslim women any less systemically disenfranchised? Have the Ramadan ranges of maxi dresses and moon-shaped jewellery changed the political realities that we are subjected to?

The answer is, of course, no. Even the briefest look at the political landscape across the Western world tells us that Muslims are in a more precarious position than ever before.

We have seen violent riots on the streets targeting sites linked to Muslims. We have seen visible Muslims abused and attacked in public. Every tabloid media outlet is parroting the same narratives that Muslims are to blame for the country’s woes.

What is termed the immigration debate is essentially a distilled hatred of Muslims masquerading as the valid concerns of overlooked citizens. The surge of the far right, the normalisation of anti-Muslim narratives in mainstream politics and the success of political forces like Reform UK all point to a situation where Muslims are more overtly maligned and demonised than ever before.

At times like this, when events like modest fashion week come along and tempt us into believing they signal some sort of end of deep-rooted, structural islamophobia, it feels more vital than ever that we do the opposite. That we peek beneath the shiny facade and see that no amount of hijabis on a runway can offset the number of protestors in prison who dared have an opinion on genocide.

Indeed, there’s no number of Ramadan-influenced beauty products that can assuage the barrage of anti-Muslim disinformation being peddled by almost all of our mainstream politicians. That there’s no Eid edit good enough to unravel the structural ways that Muslims remain disenfranchised and subjugated.

That’s not to say that there isn’t room to find joy in the expression of our cultural and religious dress, or even to welcome those things finally nudging into mainstream fashion and beauty spaces. But let’s not lose sight of what this is.

Something like modest fashion week might be uplifting or enjoyable on a superficial level, but they aren’t radical - they don’t signal real, political change. And pretending they do allows us to be gaslit into believing that being a valuable consumer category is somehow the same as being genuinely humanised.

Let’s be honest, this isn’t the end result of our struggle. This isn’t the collective change we demand in the face of a system that is manufactured to scapegoat and penalise us. This is simply the grimy workings of capitalism wrapped up in a shroud of diversity and inclusion.

Nadeine Asbali is a freelance writer and secondary school teacher based in London. She is the author of Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain.

Follow Nadeine on X: @nadeinewrites

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.