Islamic Clothing in Birmingham: Designers and Personal Style

A useful way to explore Islamic clothing in Birmingham is to start with people: who made a garment, why someone chose it, and how a particular colour or shape became meaningful. Those questions lead beyond a label on a rail to family memories, creative ambitions and individual approaches to modest dressing.

This guide follows Birmingham connections through designers, artists, personal accounts and community projects. It looks closely at the making, memories and choices behind clothes, whether your interest begins with an abaya, a headscarf, a family outfit or a design you have seen in an exhibition. You can appreciate those connections while keeping your own preferences and understanding of modesty.

Begin with the person wearing the clothes

Birmingham has been a setting for research that takes Muslim women’s own accounts seriously. In the abstract of her 2013 doctoral study, Sabah Firoz Uddin describes fieldwork using in-depth interviews and media analysis in the city. Her subjects included women’s spaces, Muslim-focused media and Islamic fashion, considered alongside the cultural and religious expectations women encountered.

Her starting point is useful for a clothing guide: a woman should be able to explain her own choices. An outfit can be discussed through taste, belief, family relationships or a particular occasion, without assuming which of those matters most to its wearer.

When someone describes her clothes, notice her vocabulary. She may talk about a favourite colour, a personal commitment or the pleasure of dressing for a celebration. Let that explanation guide the conversation. A visible garment is a beginning for understanding someone’s style, rather than enough information to write her story for her.

Clothing memories belong in Birmingham’s history

The Library of Birmingham’s Home Away from Home archive account brings everyday experience into view. Archivist Emma Hancox describes oral histories, photographs and a project booklet recording women’s moves from Mirpur to Saltley and Washwood Heath during the 1960s and 1970s.

One recollection concerns Rozina buying footwear. Unsure how to ask about a price, she was surprised when the shopkeeper spoke to her in Urdu; he had previously lived in Multan. The exchange made an ordinary purchase a remembered moment of connection. The collection’s catalogue reference, MS 4760, identifies the archive if you want to investigate those accounts further.

These memories form part of Birmingham’s wider South Asian social history. The archive’s value for understanding dress is the attention it gives to everyday objects and the people around them. A pair of shoes can lead into a story about language, confidence and settling into a city. Family clothing deserves the same patient attention as an elaborate garment displayed in a gallery.

Family memories stitched into a sari

Clothing also became a place for shared memories in New Hope Global’s Our Stories Through Nakshi Kantha project in Aston. Amal’s July 2024 participant account describes women recording journeys from Bangladesh to Birmingham through embroidery, with work gathered into a sari, a memory book and other pieces.

Rabia Choudhury recognised a connection with her heritage when she saw the group stitching. She began by embroidering her name on the sari. She later depicted Central Mosque, linking the building to her father’s contribution to its construction. The stitches gave a family memory a visible place within the project.

Rahima Begum described starting without embroidery skills and practising flowers before making a piece for the book. Textile artist Abeda Begum taught the technique, helped participants translate their stories into stitched work and curated a portable exhibition.

The examples place different kinds of experience beside one another: a name, a remembered contribution to the city and the satisfaction of learning a technique. The sari’s importance here comes from the women’s accounts and the work they put into it, rather than a claim that one garment represents every family.

Maryam Wahid: remembering people through their clothes

In Women From The Pakistani Diaspora In England, Maryam Wahid makes self-portraits in Birmingham to explore her mother’s experience as an eighteen-year-old Pakistani woman who moved to Britain. The project connects a daughter’s self-portrait with the younger woman she came to know through family history. The artist’s project statement explains that she wears outfits her mother had worn decades earlier and returns to places important to her mother’s life.

The clothing carries a particular person’s history. These are her mother’s garments, brought into a new set of images by her daughter. Place matters alongside dress: the remembered life is connected to locations, rather than presented as a timeless idea of Pakistani womanhood.

That specificity makes the project rewarding to consider when thinking about inherited clothing. The person wearing an older outfit today brings a different life to it, even when the garment is recognisable. A family piece can hold continuity and change at once. Its meaning does not have to be reduced to whether it looks old-fashioned or contemporary.

Colour and a wearer’s own styling decisions

Wahid’s 2020 interview with Autograph gives a different view of her interest in dress. Discussing her series The Hijab, she explains that colour helped her express the individuality of women who wear a headscarf. She also describes using fabrics and styles connected with the people she photographed. At the time of the interview, she said her own collection contained more than ninety coloured headscarves. She also explained that deliberately dramatic make-up helped emphasise the creativity of the women portrayed.

For Gambian Muslimah, the sitter brought her mother’s headscarf and arranged it herself. That detail changes how the image can be understood: the scarf and its styling were part of the sitter’s contribution, with a family connection of their own.

Wahid also spoke about prints, fabrics and different styles in her own clothing. Her account encourages an attentive reading of a portrait. Ask which decisions belong to the wearer, which belong to the artist, and where they meet. Colour can be an expressive choice within a person’s modest dress, without being a reliable measure of how religious, traditional or confident she is.

A local exhibition with a wider family journey

Wahid’s Zaibunnisa exhibition at Midlands Arts Centre ran from 5 February to 18 April 2022. The institution’s account describes photographs from the artist’s 2019 journey to Lahore with her mother, exploring memory, identity and the family home. The title refers to her mother’s birth name, before her move from Pakistan to Britain in 1982.

MAC describes this as Wahid’s first visit to Pakistan. Her mother reconnected with friends and family, while the artist explored the family home and considered the life she might have led had she grown up there.

The exhibition also recognised the life her parents had made in Birmingham. That combination matters when approaching clothing heritage: a connection with a place of origin can sit alongside a deeply established life elsewhere. The two do not have to compete for space in a person’s identity.

The exhibition is now closed, but its archived introduction provides context for the project. Reading such an account can help you approach an artist’s work through the relationships that shaped it, instead of treating an unfamiliar outfit as an isolated decorative image.

Farwa Moledina: giving textile its own voice

Cloth also carries a deliberate challenge in Farwa Moledina’s Not Your Fantasy. In her 2020 guest article for Birmingham Museums, the artist explains how the project developed from her 2018 degree show. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery later acquired Not Your Fantasy I.

She describes images of a woman dressed in white, with colour concentrated in patterned fabric. That fabric incorporates fragments of Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque alongside her own embroidery and henna-based lettering. The layers were created to question representations imposed on Muslim women.

Moledina explains that photographing the fabric and printing the resulting image onto textile produces a further layer of interpretation. Cloth is both the subject within the picture and the material carrying it.

The caption records sublimation printing on polyester and digital embroidery. These named processes give the work a material identity: its argument is carried by printed cloth and stitched detail.

Her account rewards close attention to process. A pattern that initially appears decorative can contain text, earlier imagery and an artist’s response to both. Reading how those elements were made helps a viewer understand the work’s argument as well as its appearance.

Mahtab Hussain and men’s self-presentation

Birmingham-raised photographer Mahtab Hussain offers another perspective on clothing and identity. In his 2017 interview with David Campany, he discusses You Get Me?, his series portraying British South Asian Muslim boys and men. His own background includes Druids Heath and Handsworth; the series addresses a wider British community.

Hussain explains that a person’s walk or an interesting item of clothing could first attract his attention. He then asked sitters how they wanted to be seen. Seventeenth-century court and society portraits influenced his interest in a direct gaze, giving the person in the picture an active relationship with the viewer.

The published captions include a grey hoodie and a green chalk-stripe suit. Those references place different forms of dress within the same project. Hussain also explains his horizontal framing through its relationship to advertising and the public images of male beauty found on screens and billboards.

He included interviews alongside the portraits because appearance alone could not carry the complexity he wanted to explore. Clothing matters in this account, while the men’s words add experiences and meanings that an outfit cannot supply by itself.

Osman Yousefzada: from dressmaking to movement and public art

The V&A’s account of Osman Yousefzada’s Fashion in Motion presentation traces an early influence to his mother’s dressmaking business in Birmingham. The museum connects that experience with his later decision to study fashion design at Central Saint Martins. For the 2010 event at the London museum, he presented pieces from his collections, while contemporary dancers demonstrated how his designs moved on the body.

The event offers two useful ways to approach a designer’s work. One is to ask about the making practices that first interested them. The other is to look beyond a garment’s outline in a still image and consider how its designer chose to present it.

A dance presentation gives movement a deliberate role in the encounter with clothes. It invites attention to changing shapes and relationships between fabric and the person wearing it. A viewer can look for the way a line or fold changes as the wearer turns and crosses the space. Yousefzada’s Birmingham connection also places family dressmaking within a broader account of professional design, without making assumptions about who might wear his collections.

In a 2022 memoir extract, Yousefzada recalls drawing leaves, vines and flowers for his mother’s embroidery. At university in London, he made Pathani trousers from synthetic polycotton, beaded chokers and embroidered mirrored hats.

When garments become part of an exhibition

For Being Somewhere Else at Ikon in June 2018, Yousefzada brought textiles, moving image and installation into the gallery. Ikon describes imported garments associated with low-paid production for Western fast fashion, alongside a tent-like structure with hand-sewn embroidery and an installation recalling an immigrant bedroom.

The bedroom drew on his family’s experience. Clothes and furnishings therefore appeared within questions of labour, memory and belonging. They were being used to communicate ideas, as well as to occupy a space visually.

The associated Migrant Festival connected fashion with art, film and music. Its programme included a conversation between fashion commentator Caryn Franklin and V&A fashion and textiles curator Oriole Cullen. For someone exploring the city’s clothing culture, this is an example of a creative conversation taking place across different settings.

When viewing comparable work, start by identifying what the artist has placed together. A garment next to furniture may suggest a different story from the same garment presented alone. Read the artist’s or curator’s explanation before deciding what that relationship means.

A pattern on the scale of the city

Yousefzada’s Infinity Pattern 1 took a different form in 2021: a temporary pink-and-black tessellated installation covering Birmingham’s Selfridges building during renovation. Ikon, which co-commissioned the work, connects the repeating design with the artist’s interest in migration, community and a world without borders.

The artist described personal and cultural history as part of the work. Its scale gave pattern a presence in the city itself, beyond the dimensions of a garment or a gallery wall. Ikon had led an international competition to select the winning design, giving the artist’s proposal a specific public commissioning context.

For a reader interested in fashion, it is a useful example of following a creative idea across forms. A designer’s interest in pattern may be expressed through an installation as well as clothing. The context changes what the pattern is doing: here, the public artwork carried a stated idea about connection and belonging. The archived account lets you explore that temporary project through its documented design and the artist’s explanation.

Natalie Sakinah: personal style and a local creative ambition

In a 2021 announcement for a Birmingham pop-up, Natalie Sakinah explained the personal motivation behind her abaya and kaftan label, Murr De Murr. She described growing up in Newtown, enjoying a distinctive style and wanting to dress for special occasions while maintaining her own approach to modesty.

The announcement set out a Bullring pop-up for 28 April 2021, following work with small boutiques and local event stalls. It dated the label’s start to January 2019. The sequence describes a business developing through several forms of local retail activity. Sakinah also credited family members working in the business and support from other women entrepreneurs. Her account locates the launch within those working and personal relationships.

Her account is valuable because it joins a specific clothing interest with the practical ambition to create a business. Occasion dressing and faith were part of how she explained her own preferences. Readers need not share those exact preferences to understand the motivation. A founder’s description can help you identify what draws you to a label’s creative direction, while leaving you free to make a different choice for your own wardrobe.

Making room for other creatives

A 2023 programme announcement described Sakinah’s work with the Birmingham Fashion Council, an initiative it dated to early 2022. At the time, it reported quarterly networking events and sewing classes, alongside plans for a fashion weekend on 28 and 29 October 2023.

Sakinah’s accompanying statement focused on giving Birmingham’s creative community opportunities to connect and show its work. The proposed programme brought fashion presentations together with art and other creative activity.

The programme reflected a local effort to develop relationships around design, although the dated announcement does not establish which activities run today.

Haida Hamidi: bringing different clothing interests together

In her interview with Thawra, Birmingham stylist and designer Haida Hamidi recalled designing dresses for childhood visits to weddings in Afghanistan. She described studying textiles and fashion branding, then developing her direction through styling and creative connections.

Her 2021 Signature collection brought together streetwear, smarter dressing and modest fashion. Hamidi described fifteen pieces arranged into nine looks, with an intention to include men and women. Monogram prints were among the collection’s features. She also discussed gender-neutral dressing and the possibility of coordinating outfits as a couple.

Hamidi wanted to create opportunities for people of colour on both sides of the camera. In her account, the people taking part in the creative work mattered alongside the finished clothes.

The collection provides a specific example of a designer combining interests that a broad label might conceal. Looking at one documented project lets you ask how those interests meet: through a print, a shared visual detail or the relationship between different looks. It is more informative than assuming that every designer who uses the word modest is pursuing the same aesthetic.

Ajan Mohamed and Iftin: authorship through design and film

In Hyphen’s September 2026 report from an Iftin shoot, founder Ajan Mohamed described her approach to the Birmingham-based label. Her influences included magazines, street style and Somali heritage, with colour and print important to her own design interests. She drew and illustrated designs while working with manufacturers in China. Mohamed also wanted wearers to have room to express their faith individually, rather than conform to one prescribed version of the brand’s look.

The report followed a short film timed around London Fashion Week. Its fictional story featured Somali model Juwayriya Ali imagining an agency led by Muslim women, before finding a creative route with friends. The story placed modelling, friendship and creative independence within the brand’s visual presentation.

This example makes authorship visible at several stages: the founder’s design choices, the film’s story and the participants’ presence on screen. Clothing is part of a wider creative presentation. When exploring a label through a film, notice how the garments, characters and setting work together. That can tell you what the project wants to express, while a fictional story remains distinct from the participants’ personal biographies.

Personal accounts show why place can matter

In MIAH Foundation’s oral-history account of Dahab Jihar, she describes moving to Birmingham in 2004. Having lived in several countries, including Sweden, she spoke about feeling more comfortable wearing her hijab and veil in Birmingham.

She describes beginning to wear hijab in her twenties, although her sense of Muslim identity was already strong. In Birmingham, she became familiar with the community in Small Heath and connected with Eritrean Muslims. The account also records a weekly women’s circle she began. These details place clothing within a wider experience of relationships, faith and everyday life.

For Jihar, the combination of familiar people, shared activities and a preferred way of dressing helps explain the sense of connection in her recollection. Her account gives that relationship with Birmingham a personal context.

If you ask about a garment in a family or community conversation, leave room for the person to talk about the places where it mattered to her.

Recognising an individual path

A different Birmingham perspective appears in Stylist’s 2022 interviews about the headscarf. Farrah, identified as a freelance PR professional in the city, described being Muslim without wearing a headscarf. Colleagues sometimes learned about her faith when she mentioned prayer or fasting, she explained.

Her account recalled pressure to wear a scarf when she was younger, followed by a more personal engagement with Islam in her twenties. She wanted time to develop her understanding and commitments.

For Farrah, modesty concerned behaviour as well as clothing. She described wanting to build foundations for her faith, with a headscarf decision forming part of that personal process.

For a clothing conversation, the practical lesson is to avoid demanding an explanation for someone else’s appearance. If a person chooses to discuss her reasons, listen to the experience she describes. A shared interest in modest fashion can leave room for different relationships with a headscarf.

Zahra: rebuilding a clothing practice in Birmingham

A Craftspace account of Zahra in Birmingham brings the discussion to the work of making clothes. In the accompanying translated interview, she describes designing and sewing since 2004, later developing embroidery in response to interest in older forms of dress.

She explains the relationship between a colourful Kurdish cap and the rest of an outfit: beads, sequins and colour can connect the headpiece with decoration on a dress. Her account gives the cap a place within an ensemble, rather than treating it as an isolated accessory.

In Birmingham, with fewer materials and no sewing machine, she describes finding other ways to continue. An unwanted necklace can supply decoration; beads and sequins removed from a jumper can become materials for another piece. She also recounts turning a donated woman’s dress into a hand-sewn dress for her daughter.

These are specific decisions about construction, ornament and what is available. Zahra’s examples show an experienced maker adapting an existing practice through reuse. They also make room in the city’s clothing story for work created by hand, away from a shop or a fashion show.

Explore clothing culture through making

Community learning can offer another route into the subject. MIAH Foundation advertised a tatreez workshop in Balsall Heath for October 2025, at MIAH Gallery in the Moseley Community Hub, as part of its Believe in Balsall Heath programme. The planned session introduced a cypress-tree motif using cross-stitch on grid fabric, with guidance and materials for participants.

The programme named the Old Printworks and The GAP Arts Projects among its partners, placing the session within a wider neighbourhood collaboration. The advertised format made room for learning a textile technique together. For a beginner, working on a small motif offers a focused question: how do individual stitches build a recognisable pattern?

That is a different encounter from looking at a finished garment online. A taught exercise can direct attention to the choices involved in placing stitches and colours. It can also provide a setting to ask the tutor about the particular tradition being introduced.

This was a dated workshop announcement, so it should be read as an example of local creative programming. For a future session, consult the organiser’s current information rather than assuming that the same workshop or booking arrangements continue.

Bring the ideas back to your own style

You can respond to Birmingham’s clothing culture through something already meaningful to you: an occasion outfit, a headscarf, a family garment or an interest in making. A particular colour, detail or construction may speak to your taste without requiring you to adopt a designer’s complete look.

There is room to enjoy that encounter and choose differently for yourself. Keep the maker’s explanation and your own response alongside one another. The pleasure is in understanding clothes more closely and recognising the people whose work, memories and choices give them meaning.

Place the local stories alongside other creative work

Explore hijab in British fashion to continue beyond the city through designers, image makers and community projects. For a closer look at a particular media career, our account of Amena Khan and personal choice keeps the person’s work and own explanation at the centre.