Modest fashion: Inside a $300bn industry
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2024
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As modest fashion week starts in Istanbul, we look at the growth of this area of the fashion industry.
Long considered a faith-based choice, it is gaining in popularity, proven by the modest-friendly options that many leading brands now offer.
We hear the thoughts of retailers and designers on why more women are choosing to dress modestly. And content creator Maha Gondal explains how she's bringing her take on modest fashion to her thousands of followers.
Plus we look at what can go wrong when brands try to cash in on what they see as a lucrative market.
Presented and produced by Megan Lawton
(Image: Woman wearing a maxi dress with long sleeves, standing in front of a wall covered with foliage. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Megan Lawton. Today, we're talking modest fashion. |
| 0:12.0 | This weekend, designers, models, buyers and fashion fans will head to Istanbul for Modest Fashion Week, |
| 0:19.5 | a collection of events showcasing the latest trends. |
| 0:23.1 | We're expecting more than 2,000 guests for three days, and we will see diverse designers from all around the world. |
| 0:32.3 | Modest fashion is about covering up, but staying on trend. Dressing modestly but fashionably is already popular with Muslim women, |
| 0:40.5 | but it's not exclusive to people of any one religion or belief. |
| 0:45.0 | And it's a growing industry. |
| 0:47.1 | I think we just had a really rapid growth within the Gen Z and within the Western world. |
| 0:52.7 | Although all eyes are on Istanbul this weekend, there's other |
| 0:56.2 | places vying for the title of modest fashion capital. There is so many modest brand right now |
| 1:01.7 | in Indonesia. Modest fashion is really growing. Long considered a faith-based choice, modest fashion |
| 1:07.0 | is gaining in popularity, proven by the modest friendly options that many leading brands now |
| 1:11.9 | offer. I realized that there were a lot of women coming to us, not because they were religious, |
| 1:16.3 | but because they were postpartum and they didn't want, you know, cutouts in their gowns anymore, |
| 1:20.9 | or they were working in professional environment. But with so many brands trying to cash in on |
| 1:26.8 | the market, sometimes it goes wrong. |
| 1:29.3 | I think it's really used as a marketing tactic in the West. |
| 1:33.2 | In today's Business Daily, we'll hear from the people that make up this billion-dollar industry |
| 1:37.5 | and find out where it's going next. |
| 1:44.1 | Lots of which will be shown on catwalks in Istanbul this weekend at Modest Fashion Week, |
| 1:50.2 | which was started by Oslim Sakhin Ertas. |
| 1:53.2 | The beauty of the modest fashion, it is really welcoming to every type of woman. |
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