Hijab Style in Singapore: Outfits, Designers and Creative Choices

A headscarf belongs to an outfit: its effect depends on the surrounding shapes, colours and the preferences of the person wearing it. Exploring hijab style in Singapore through identifiable wardrobes and design projects brings those decisions into view.

The accounts below follow particular wearers, designers and presentations. They include everyday clothes and ambitious occasion pieces, alongside explanations of how an idea became a finished look. Their dates matter: a recorded collection shows what someone was making then, while an interview gives that person’s perspective. The emphasis is on what each person chose and what the garment contributes to the outfit.

Everyday clothes and individual preferences

Nora: boots across a changing wardrobe

Boots remained a constant when Nora began wearing hijab regularly. In Shentonista’s “Dressed to Impress”, 16 January 2025, the Singapore paralegal described covering more while retaining this favourite part of her outfits. Her oldest pair was also her favourite; a heeled pair often came off after a long walk and was changed at the office.

She enjoyed adapting familiar clothes between work and weekends. Pieces she dressed up for the office could be worn more casually with trainers and a T-shirt. The published outfit credits included a top and skirt, a belt and a scarf, giving the footwear a place within a complete combination.

Nora’s interest was in putting clothes together, rather than assuming that an expensive label made an outfit successful. She felt that changing shoes could alter its character substantially. Her account makes the continuity in a wardrobe visible: beginning hijab changed her coverage, while her affection for boots and the pleasure of dressing for the day remained her own.

Nadzirah: white clothes and quieter accessories

Nadzirah described a preference for a restrained, polished appearance in Shentonista’s “Peas in a Pod”, 13 February 2022. She liked white clothing and fabrics she described as satin or silk. Colour was welcome too, provided other details became quieter; simple earrings were her example of how she would balance a more colourful outfit.

The outfit record paired a headscarf with a top and trousers, alongside a watch and ring. Her explanation concerned the relationship between these elements, rather than a rule that every piece must attract attention. It also left room for repetition: familiar white clothes were a style she enjoyed returning to. The appeal came from a combination that felt recognisable to her, with accessories adjusting how emphatic the finished look became.

Asma: a hoodie, a scarf and creative interests

The outfit in Shentonista’s “Coming of Age”, 19 November 2023 placed a hoodie and hijab together with shoes, a bag, a bracelet and rings. That combination brings a casual garment into the same frame as considered accessories, without requiring an evening dress or a formal occasion.

Asma, originally from Bangkok, had moved to Singapore in 2019. She described painting, photography and content creation among her interests, and enjoyed sharing her outfits online. Her stated aim was to encourage other women to see room for fashion within modest dressing.

Haji Lane and Arab Street were places she returned to frequently, giving this account a particular Singapore setting. Her clothing story included the enjoyment of being out in the city and making images, as well as choosing the garments themselves. A hoodie provided a familiar casual starting point, with her scarf and accessories completing the published look.

Leave room for different relationships with tudung

Personal style does not give every wearer the same relationship with covering. A National University of Singapore research summary, 8 May 2018, discusses Suriani Suratman’s study of five Malay Muslim women and their relationships with tudung. The summary describes tensions between their identification with the covering and the limitations they felt it placed on their individual selves.

The university was summarising a 2011 chapter, and the small qualitative study should not be read as a national trend. It gives this collection of fashion stories a useful qualification: the appearance of a scarf cannot explain all the choices behind it. The women’s differing experiences make room for personal explanations alongside descriptions of what people wear. For a separate regional account of headscarf names, craft and women’s experiences, explore our guide to Malaysian khimar and tudung.

Graphic prints and a streetwear vocabulary

Lully Selb: beginning with a desired look

Selma Bamadhaj described wanting modest clothing with an aesthetic she would enjoy wearing in Joe Escobedo’s October 2016 Forbes interview. Much of what she encountered felt too traditional or delicately feminine for her taste. Lully Selb, developed with Nur Rulhuda, approached modest dressing through streetwear instead.

Their presentation of the clothes also depended on individual style. The founders described choosing people whose personality and dress suited the label, including people with an audience within their own social circles. A shawl worn in an outfit photograph could become the detail viewers wanted to identify. How personal taste becomes a clothing collection is also explored in our six modest-fashion designer profiles.

Illustration becomes part of the garment

The DesignSingapore Council’s Singapore Fashion Black Book places Lully Selb within a wider selection of local design. Its entry describes prints developed from hand illustration, with exploratory strokes and patterns giving the clothes their character. The page identifies special prints for the Singapore Fashion Designers’ Salon.

This is a different way of approaching ornament from treating it as a small finishing touch. A distinctive drawn mark can provide the principal identity of a textile and, through it, a garment. The entry connects that visual work with the founders’ wish to express individuality within their own modest approach to dress.

The book’s foreword explains that Daniel Boey curated the selection and combined pieces to explore different Singapore fashion possibilities. Lully Selb’s prints therefore appear within an institutional presentation that makes room for varied designers and combinations. Their contribution lies in a recognisable illustrated surface, rather than a claim that one motif or silhouette should represent everybody.

A printed pencil skirt with a coordinating cape

A more specific outfit appears in Annabel Kerman’s January 2017 report for Sassy Mama. After attending The Hive’s Runway presentation, the fashion writer highlighted Lully Selb’s long printed pencil skirts and coordinating capes. She described original illustration as the starting point and the collection as designed with combinations of separate pieces in mind.

The pairing gives the print a role within an ensemble. A long pencil skirt and a cape are distinct garments, so the relationship between them matters alongside the pattern on either piece. Coordinating them creates a considered outfit without turning them into one uninterrupted dress.

An evening collaboration between Singapore and Brunei

For the 2018 Commonwealth Fashion Exchange, Singapore’s Lully Selb worked with Farhanna Pura, the designer behind Brunei label Na Forrér. The Commonwealth Fashion Council’s account of the collaboration identifies a baju kebaya evening look incorporating Bruneian songket and Euca silk hand-painted by Lully Selb.

The upper part included a boxy shirt with raised shoulders, which the designer connected with strength and women’s empowerment. The painted textile and the shaped upper garment brought different kinds of authorship into one ensemble. This was a shared project, with the Singapore and Bruneian contributions named separately.

The look was presented at Buckingham Palace on 19 February 2018 and subsequently at the Australian High Commission in London. Its interest extends beyond the setting. Lully Selb contributed to an evening garment through textile work, while the painted surface and pronounced shoulders gave the collaboration its own character.

Personal clothes and the making of a fashion image

Fahimah Thalib: family cloth in a personal wardrobe

An indigo batik inherited from her grandmother was among Fahimah Thalib’s most valued clothes. In Vogue Singapore’s “Style Qs” interview, she explained that her mother had made the textile into overlay trousers. Its importance came from both the family connection and the new garment it had become.

She described her style through modesty, an eclectic approach and femininity. Her named inspirations included Nabilah Kariem, Marwa Biltagi and Imane Asry, while her treasured possessions also included the first gold jewellery she had bought for herself: a ring set with a colour-changing stone.

These preferences give the outfit more texture than a broad description of modest fashion. An inherited printed fabric, a particular trouser construction and a personally chosen ring carry different meanings within the same wardrobe. Fahimah’s answer also gives her mother’s sewing a visible place in the clothes’ history. The garment was valued as something she could wear, alongside the relationship preserved in its cloth.

Clothes made and altered within a family

Fahimah’s 2021 first-person interview with Crazycat traces that pleasure in dressing to a household familiar with textiles. Her family sold cloth, and her mother sewed, altered clothes and made outfits for her. Dressing with cousins at Hari Raya could feel like a small family fashion show.

Her early modelling also grew from an existing creative relationship. When her cousin Selma studied fashion design, Fahimah volunteered to wear pieces for student projects. She later modelled for the first Lully Selb collection. Clothes moved from being something she enjoyed privately to work she helped others present.

Fahimah also kept a separate profession because modelling income felt uncertain to her. Fashion remained part of her life through several relationships: her mother making clothes, her cousins enjoying them together and Selma asking her to help show a design. The interview gives the people around the finished outfit a place in its story.

A launch film with agreed clothing boundaries

Fahimah described the practical work behind Vogue Singapore’s launch video in Berita Harian’s September 2020 interview. She had initially wondered what the production would ask her to wear. Her stylist, she said, paid close attention to the modest appearance she wanted to maintain.

The report describes a ten-hour shoot for a short film in which she wore Gucci and walked through settings including Gardens by the Bay and the Esplanade area. She also said the team made space for prayer during the shoot. Those details belong to her account of that production, rather than a general rule about how fashion sets operate.

For a viewer, the finished look brings clothing, movement and place together. Her explanation adds the choices negotiated before that image appeared: what she felt comfortable modelling and how the working day accommodated her practice. The outfit was part of a collaboration in which the person wearing it had boundaries of her own.

A headscarf within a tailored fashion portrait

In Vogue Singapore’s March 2022 Every Body project, Fahimah appeared in a Sportmax jacket and trousers. The magazine’s “As I Am” feature placed her within a larger set of model portraits and interviews. Her own answer focused on what the headscarf meant within such visible work.

She explained that she had taken modelling more seriously after beginning to wear hijab and regarded the scarf as a clear expression of her boundaries. For her, appearing in a fashion image and maintaining those boundaries could coexist.

The credited jacket-and-trouser outfit gives that explanation a concrete setting. The scarf appeared alongside tailoring within a complete fashion presentation. Fahimah’s account connects the visibility of the clothes with a decision about her own participation: she could take modelling seriously while retaining the covering she wanted to wear.

Local clothing within a commissioned campaign

A separate Singapore project connected fashion labels with national imagery. UNIFORM’s December 2019 account of “1959 x Shentonista” identifies five participating labels: David’s Daughter, Lully Selb, Pew Pew Patches, Supermama and Temasek Clothings.

The campaign concerned a line of collectibles marking the national symbols’ sixtieth anniversary. UNIFORM described conversations with four people from different backgrounds and credited the production to its team and Shentonista, for the ministry’s 1959 project. Lully Selb’s participation placed its fashion work within a broader visual commission alongside other local makers.

Occasion dressing and the choice of cloth

Rina Tahar: songket for different settings

Rina Tahar described adapting songket to a cardigan-style garment that could be worn over jeans in Vanessa Chia’s April 2023 CNA Lifestyle interview. That choice brought a fabric she associated with special occasions into a more casual outfit, changing the surrounding clothes rather than discarding the textile’s visual interest.

Her Sufyaa work also included an emerald-green songket dress for Halimah Yacob. Rina described encouraging a departure from the wearer’s more familiar clothing choices for that gala appearance. Everyday layering and an occasion dress thus appear within the same designer’s account, with different purposes.

She also explained how individual details could distinguish relatives dressed in a shared fabric. The material could connect the family while each garment retained something of its wearer. Her own earlier experience of lengthening and lining purchased clothes helped explain why those choices mattered to her. The question was how a complete outfit could accommodate the person’s way of dressing, whether the starting point was jeans, a gala invitation or a family ensemble.

Lulu Alhadad: lace and georgette in one design

Lulu Alhadad described combining lace and georgette for a planned Kampong Glam presentation in Ervina Mohd Jamil’s Berita Harian preview, 5 July 2019. Lace was a material she associated with baju kebaya, while she used georgette for kaftans. Bringing them into one garment was her way of expressing Malay and Arab connections to the area.

The preview identified eight looks from her collection and two additional outfits using cloth that included material from a Kampong Glam textile shop. The local connection was therefore present in the sourcing as well as the designer’s explanation. The scheduled show formed part of the area’s GSS programme.

Two materials associated with different parts of Lulu’s work were combined for this design brief. Her explanation places the fabric selection within her own relationship to the neighbourhood. Published before the show, the report preserves that intention: to bring connections she saw in Kampong Glam into the clothes she planned to present there.

Formalwear and bridal clothes at the museum

The Peranakan Museum’s 2023 “Community Voices: Meet the Arab Peranakans” programme placed fashion within a community presentation. Its scheduled 20 August show paired Lulu Alhadad’s formal and daywear with bridal clothing from Ibtiiman Bridal, followed by a discussion with the designers.

The museum’s description identifies jalabiyas and kaftans among Lulu’s work. It also names the two sisters behind Ibtiiman: Ibtisam, a make-up artist, and Iman, a fashion designer. Their planned presentation included clothing for brides and grooms, broadening the occasion wardrobe beyond a single woman’s outfit.

The announced programme gave different clothing purposes room to appear together. Daywear, formalwear and bridal pieces could be discussed through the people who developed them. In that setting, a kaftan and a groom’s wedding clothes belonged to the same conversation about a community’s design work, while retaining their different uses.

Khadijah Ibrahim: from bridal clothes to a Raya collection

Khadijah Ibrahim, known through Katt & Co, developed her fashion work through bridal dressing. In Humaira Safiya Mohd Helmi’s August 2026 Berita Harian interview, she described moving from bridal assistance towards a fresher, more contemporary approach to the clothes.

The Wedding Brocade began in 2012 with a small selection of bridal outfits, including pieces from Fatima Mohsin and from her own label. In 2017, preparing clothes during Ramadan led to a Hari Raya collection and the development of Katt & Co’s ready-to-wear work.

These are related but different clothing occasions. A bridal wardrobe and clothes prepared for Raya need not have the same scale or formality. Her account records how working with one kind of occasion helped open another part of her design practice.

Family memory and new textile designs

Aqilah Zailan: a jacket, a blouse and remembered dress

Aqilah Zailan connects particular garments with her Javanese-Malay Singaporean identity in Fashion & Market’s “My Own Words”. She remembers insisting on batik wiron and a kebaya for Hari Raya in 2002. Her father found the outfit in Joo Chiat Complex and associated her appearance with his mother’s way of dressing.

The account also identifies two Studio Gypsied designs. The Semerbak open jacket carries a magnolia reference, associated in its description with being remembered for character and convictions. The Teduh Poet Blouse uses a motif described through laying bricks and building foundations. Those explanations belong to the named designs, rather than every flower or geometric pattern in batik.

These are garments within the wider clothing environment around a headscarf, not projects the source identifies as hijab designs. Their interest lies in the relationship between a wearable piece and a specific memory or message. A jacket and a blouse can carry those associations while remaining distinct choices within an outfit.

From handmade accessories to a clothing collection

In the National Heritage Board’s Studio Gypsied project interview, Aqilah described beginning with batik accessories and bags she sewed herself. The later move into apparel changed the studio’s work: it developed ready-to-wear womenswear and began creating its own motifs in relationships with batik artisans.

She explained that a grant gave her room to experiment with alternative cloth for batik. The work involved trying materials, developing motifs and preparing garments, rather than assuming that an appealing drawing was already a finished clothing design. The account names a collection called Tumbuh and describes checking a sample top through wear and washing.

Aqilah’s account connects surface design with the piece it would become. Sewing a small accessory and developing cloth for a complete garment posed different questions for the studio. Experimentation gave the team time to consider the motif, the fabric and the intended form together, with the sample top providing something they could handle and wear.

Designing the scarf around a particular use

Adlina Anis: a scarf commission with a precise brief

Adlina Anis described designing headscarves for Muslim members of Singapore Airlines’ ground crew in Vanessa Tai’s December 2023 Her World interview. The airline commission involved incorporating features requested by staff while dealing with fabric availability, production and logistics during pandemic restrictions. She said the process took up to a year.

Earlier in her fashion career she had trained in design and worked in magazine styling, including at Prestige, L’Officiel and Amica. People subsequently approached her for help with modest clothing and scarves. Her husband’s aunt gave her a bag of scarves, which became a starting point for developing that work.

The airline commission added another kind of outfit: clothing developed for a defined working setting, with its intended wearers contributing to the requirements. Adlina described the satisfaction of seeing staff wearing the result. Her account brings the scarf into view as an item shaped by a particular brief and a lengthy development process.

Ninja Echo: an opening for earphones

A small opening was central to another Adlina design. Jacky Yap’s 2016 Vulcan Post interview describes the Ninja Echo scarf’s flap arrangement, intended to let a wearer insert or remove earphones while keeping the surrounding area covered. Adlina connected the idea with her own experience of running and wanting easier access to the earphones.

The report illustrated a navy version and discussed the time spent developing the design. Adlina said it had taken a year to arrive at the form she wanted. She also described producing through her own workshop and considering further colours and materials.

The central feature is the relationship between the opening and the covered shape. An everyday action became a reason to change the scarf’s construction. Here, innovation appears at the scale of a detail: Adlina wanted the surrounding scarf to stay in place while the wearer reached the earphone. Her own experience supplied the question she set out to resolve.

Nawal Alhaddad: long tops and expressive prints

For Nawal Alhaddad, a longer exercise top was a significant design decision. In Tan Wei Lin’s March 2021 CNA Lifestyle interview, the GLOWco founder described customers wanting long sleeves and tops that covered the bottom. Her starting questions came from family, friends and people attending her fitness classes.

Colour and print were part of the brief too. The account identifies printed sports tights among the label’s clothing, and Nawal wanted the collections to feel enjoyable as well as address the coverage her customers sought. A long upper layer and a patterned lower piece could therefore belong to the same clothing conversation.

She described a year of preparation before launching and a team that included design, merchandising and marketing roles. The clothes took shape through conversations about what customers wanted to wear. In her account, coverage and a lively appearance were both part of the design brief: a longer top could sit within a colourful, patterned exercise wardrobe.

A range of headscarf designs, with feedback

A BERITA Mediacorp report of 24 July 2022 describes GLOWco offering ten sports-hijab designs at that time. Nawal said customer feedback mattered to development, including questions about the cloth and how it behaved in use. The report records a range under consideration, rather than one supposedly universal scarf solution.

The same report returned to Adlina Anis. She described competition as a reason to keep developing new designs, with her own experience of wearing hijab during activity informing the questions she asked. These comments concerned the makers’ priorities and approach to design.

The ten-design range makes the variety tangible. The report’s discussion of feedback also shows that design continued after an initial launch, with wearers contributing questions for the next iteration. For these makers, the sports scarf was a garment with further choices to explore, rather than a single settled form.

A Singapore design conversation in Tokyo

Nur Hanis: openness to another design setting

Singapore designer Nur Hanis presented Meem Clothings at Tokyo Modest Fashion Show 2016. The Reuters report reproduced by Daily FT in December 2016 describes bright headscarves and garments with floral and marbled effects across the show. Those observations concern the presentation as a whole, rather than identifying every design as hers.

Nur Hanis spoke about the possibilities opened by customers wanting Japanese accents or kimono references. She did not describe one fixed way to design or wear a hijab, and wanted to bring ideas from the Tokyo experience back into her work.

Her comments place the wearer’s interest alongside the designer’s encounter with another setting. A request for a Japanese accent could give a project its starting point. The Tokyo presentation offered Nur Hanis a place to consider such possibilities, while the colourful scarves described by Reuters formed part of the wider visual setting in which her work appeared.

Clothes for occasions and everyday wear

In Richard Smith’s March 2017 report for The National, Meem Clothings was described as making jubbahs and dresses for both events and everyday wear. Nur Hanis reflected on the Tokyo presentation through the experience and attention it had brought, while the report made clear that it had not produced contracts for the company.

The same report included Singapore designer Fatimah Mohsin, whose work encompassed bridal dresses and ready-to-wear modest clothing. She described presenting in Japan as part of her hopes for reaching a wider audience.

The two accounts broaden the clothing picture beyond the runway occasion. Jubbahs, everyday dresses, bridal pieces and ready-to-wear each had a place in these Singapore makers’ work. The Tokyo presentation offered another setting for them, while reaching a wider audience remained part of the designers’ plans.

New ways to shape a covered silhouette

Khairina Sari: an oversized bow and dramatic sleeves

Khairina Sari’s graduate collection Underneath the Veil enlarged familiar veiling arrangements into theatrical shapes. Nicole Ng’s Grazia Singapore interview describes an oversized bow at the neck, dramatic collars and puff sleeves with Elizabethan references. Khairina used duchess satin for veils as part of her experimentation with form and material.

She associated her interest in bold modest dressing with the style of singer Aina Abdul, while also naming model Rawdah Mohamed as an inspiration. Her family background included grandmothers who made baju kurung and an uncle who designed clothes, but she described her own attraction to fashion as personally motivated.

The collection gives the scarf an active role in the silhouette. Its scale can become as emphatic as a collar or sleeve, creating an exchange between the veil and the rest of the garment. The neck bow is central to that effect: a familiar tied shape becomes deliberately conspicuous. Khairina also described a future bridal label as an ambition.

Nurul Izza: folds beside architectural structure

Nurul Izza binte Rahmat’s ModestScape portfolio for BY NIBR approaches covering through relationships between softness and structure. Her LASALLE graduate portfolio connects folds with the movement of hijab wraps, while identifying brutalist architecture as an influence on the clothes’ lines and silhouettes.

The portfolio presents looks with names including Shadow, Linear, Still and Solar. It also credits a collaborative image-making team, including hijab stylists. The arrangement of the head covering therefore belongs within the presentation of the clothes, alongside the cut and the way each look is styled.

Nurul describes looking to art, cultural spaces and observation when developing her ideas. The collection brings the softness of folded cloth into contact with architectural structure. Those qualities can coexist within one look, with the head covering contributing to its lines and proportions. The portfolio presents that relationship as a recurring design interest across the collection.

ModestScape at Cantonment station

The same collection acquired a different setting when six looks were presented at Cantonment MRT station on 14 May 2026. A BERITA Mediacorp report reproduced by LASALLE on 24 May records the graduation show and Nurul’s response to the venue. The designers had learned about the location only a week beforehand.

Nurul initially found the idea surprising, then welcomed the possibility of bringing fashion closer to the community through that space. The report describes the collection through fabrics, folds and structured silhouettes, while her own explanation placed the headscarf within a broader expression of identity.

The setting adds another dimension to a finished look. Clothes developed through a student’s design process were presented on moving bodies in a recognisable part of the city’s infrastructure. Nurul described seeing the work on the runway as meaningful and hoped to continue developing her fashion practice. The documented achievement was the collection and its presentation; the next stage of her label remained something she wanted to pursue.