Headscarves in Canada: Community Histories and Creative Style

Headscarves in Canada are part of many different stories about clothing, family, faith and artistic expression. Their variety becomes clearer through particular garments and the people who make, wear or remember them. Each example retains its own setting and meaning, showing how people give scarf cloth a place in their lives.

Community histories in cloth

Doukhobor shawls: changing fabrics and embroidery

The Doukhobor Cultural Interpretive Society’s history of women’s shawls describes a changing tradition in Canada. Women arriving in 1899 wore fine wool shawls in black or beige, with a pronounced fold above the forehead and a knot beneath the chin. Some shawls sat over a close fitting hat called a kabardeenka.

As purchased cloth became more available in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, women embroidered rayon shawls with floral borders. Roses and pansies appeared in continuous arrangements around the edge. Fastening changed too: softer side folds and a brooch gave the cloth a different shape around the face.

The community account associates the 1950s with sheer nylon, separate flowers and leaves, and embroidery matching the colour beneath it. Wedding ensembles helped connect shawl and suit colours. These details reveal fashion decisions within a religious community’s dress: the spacing of flowers, the scale of a brooch and the relationship between fabric and stitching all mattered. The surviving sequence records women adapting materials and decorative work over time, rather than one permanently fixed Doukhobor look.

Ukrainian headwear preserved in Ontario

The Ukrainian Museum of Canada’s Ontario collection preserves headwear with different materials, regional connections and routes into Canadian community memory. A cashmere kerchief from Bakhmut, dated to the 1820s and donated by Vera Wusama, is recorded as a married woman’s head covering. Its accession number is UMCO.1979.0066.

Another record concerns a silk and wool namitka, or wimple, connected with the Toronto Ukrainian Orthodox Youth Organization’s 1967 centennial project. That initiative collected pioneer artefacts from Eastern Canada. The entry, UMCO.1971.0013, therefore links a particular form of head covering with an organised effort to preserve immigrant community history.

A further example from Polissia, UMCO.1977.0028, consists of two kerchiefs arranged to cover the hair as a wimple would. Dated to the early twentieth century, it makes the construction of the head covering especially clear: the effect depends on combining separate pieces. These are Ukrainian objects and documented collecting histories in Canada. Their distinct records preserve differences between a kerchief, a wimple and a paired arrangement, without turning them into a single national style.

Kokum scarves and different family memories

Avery Shtykalo and Gabrielle Legault’s 2025 study of the kokum scarf explores how similar cloth can carry different histories. Their research included interviews conducted in 2023 with three women: Ukrainian Canadian author Marion Mutala, Anishinaabe Ukrainian writer Patty Krawec, and Ukrainian Canadian photographer Sandra Semchuk.

Mutala connected the scarf with memories of Ukrainian ancestors and the babushka. Krawec described it as an assertion of Indigenous identity, despite having grown up closely connected with Ukrainian culture. Semchuk recalled exchanges between Cree and Ukrainian women, including scarves traded for moccasins or given in appreciation for shared knowledge. These accounts belong to the participants who told them.

The floral surface also mattered. Krawec associated the patterns and colours with familiar woodland plants. The study consequently gives the scarf both a material presence and a place in remembered relationships. Its three interviews do not establish one origin for every kokum scarf. They show why a story of friendship alone can be incomplete: the authors also examine settlement and colonialism alongside recollections of exchange, solidarity and family connection.

Mya Beaudry: scarf cloth becomes a scrunchie

In Kieran Delamont’s September 2020 CityNews report, Mya Beaudry was a nine-year-old maker turning kokom scarf cloth into scrunchies. Beaudry and her mother, Marcie Portelance, are Algonquin from Kitigan Zibi. Portelance explained kokom as the Algonquin word for grandmother; Beaudry associated the scarves with grandmothers wearing them outdoors.

The project began in October 2019 with a particular purpose. Beaudry wanted to raise money to host a youth dance special at Ottawa’s Summer Solstice Pow Wow, where the host would provide gifts for participants. She liked scrunchies and recognised a way to make something contemporary from the colourful floral cloth she knew.

The report describes small batches of completed pieces being shared on Instagram, with her mother helping tell the story. What travelled into the new accessory was the recognisable fabric and its family association. The scrunchie changed the cloth’s scale and use while retaining a connection Beaudry could explain in her own words. Her adaptation grew from a community occasion and a reference to older generations that she recognised.

Natasha Peter: a Kaska connection in denim

Scarf cloth also appears in the work of Kaska designer Natasha Peter. Yukon University’s June 2024 account identifies her granny hanky jean jacket as a design that connects her with her grandparents. Peter grew up on Kaska lands in Ross River and was based in Whitehorse when the story was published.

Her grandparents taught her sewing when she was young. She returned to those skills in adulthood and developed clothing and jewellery, later joining the university’s IncubateNorth programme. The account describes her wish to make Kaska people and creative traditions more visible, and her concern that her daughter should grow up knowing their cultural value.

Her granny hanky jacket carries that family connection into another garment. In the university’s account, Peter’s creative ambition is also intergenerational: she wants young people to recognise the value of sewing and their own traditions. The familiar cloth becomes part of a contemporary silhouette, giving a family reference a new place in her clothing designs.

Colour, collections and personal style

Sana Saleh: colour begins with one scarf

Sana Saleh described a very personal beginning for Lala Hijabs in STYLE Canada’s May 2021 interview. During the 2020 lockdown, she dyed an off-white scarf pink and purple, then wore it in videos. Questions about that scarf encouraged her and her husband, Will, to develop the idea further.

Saleh explained that the initial collection used pastel pinks, blues, yellows and purples before the range expanded towards neutrals. She worked on colour combinations while Will developed the dye patterns. Her description of the process emphasised individual hand dyeing: pieces could share a design while retaining small differences in their markings.

The same interview places this colour work within her own experience of hijab. Growing up in a small Western Canadian town, she had not seen women around her wearing it. She experimented while studying and chose regular wear after university. That history gives the bright scarf a meaning beyond its palette. For Saleh, designing followed a personal decision about faith and visibility, and the new patterns grew from something she first wanted to wear herself.

Iman Nakhala: several moods in one wardrobe

Montreal designer Iman Nakhala’s style resists a single visual category. In Aicha Lasfar’s March 2017 Muslim Link interview, an outfit combined an open denim shirt, a graphic T-shirt, a yellow hijab and a black beanie. Other examples included Nakhala’s own jacket with embroidery made by Jordanian women, and a floral pink dress.

The headscarf belonged within this changing vocabulary of clothes. Nakhala described moving between a tomboy mood and a more romantic one, and designing for women who wanted an individual appearance. Her comments help explain why the yellow scarf and beanie were coherent choices for her, rather than exceptions to a supposedly uniform modest wardrobe.

Nakhala had moved with her family to Quebec in 1993 and later trained in fashion in Montreal. She also described the difficulties she encountered in the industry, including responses to her veil and cultural references. These remain her reported experiences. Within that account, clothing allowed her Palestinian and Canadian connections, professional training and changing tastes to coexist without requiring the same outfit or decorative language every day.

Hafsa Altaf: matching colour and painted cloth

Hafsa Altaf’s approach places the headscarf inside a deliberately bold composition. In AV Kitching’s November 2024 Winnipeg Free Press profile, she recalled matching yellow headwear with a yellow shirt and shoes, and choosing vivid colours after she began wearing hijab. The scarf helped organise the outfit’s colour rather than disappearing into the background.

Altaf moved from Saskatoon to Winnipeg to study fashion design. The profile describes small capsule collections, oversized shapes and artwork painted directly onto cloth. Canvas and twill were among her preferred surfaces. Specific garments included skirts with snap fronts and painted panels, alongside earlier voluminous neon green shirts with matching headscarves.

Her account links modest coverage with an interest in expressive silhouettes and graphic work. Higher necklines, longer sleeves and relaxed shapes supplied the structure; painted imagery and strong colour gave individual pieces their character. The resulting style was particular to Altaf’s practice and her own account of wearing hijab. It demonstrates how scarf, garment shape and surface design can form one intentional composition, with artistic detail extending beyond the head covering itself.

Wedad Amiri: garments carrying women’s stories

Wedad Amiri’s Afflatus Hijab connects modest clothing with named women’s experiences. Breanna Mroczek’s November 2018 Avenue Edmonton profile, hosted by Edify, described eight garments bearing the names of women who had experienced mental health difficulties. Amiri wanted the names and accompanying stories to encourage conversation about stigma.

That intention grew from her earlier work as a community resource coordinator with school pupils. The profile also traced her fashion activity from an Edmonton show in October 2014 to an invitation to present at Maarkah Fashion Week in September 2018. Her stated audience included women observing religious dress requirements and others seeking modest clothing.

Amiri discussed wearing hijab from childhood and wanting people with different beliefs and appearances to feel accepted. Naming the garments made women visible within a collection, alongside its modest clothing designs. She wanted their experiences to be discussed openly. Her account makes fashion a setting for conversations she had valued in community work. The garments’ names connected Edmonton’s modest clothing scene with the stories of women whose lives supplied the collection’s references.

Eman Idil Bare: the people behind clothing

Journalist and designer Eman Idil Bare brought questions about garment making into her account of modest fashion. In Muslim Link’s April 2017 interview, she described growing up in Regina in an Ethiopian Somali family and taking time away from journalism to study fashion. Her clothing practice joined two interests she had been told were difficult to combine.

Bare said the first capsule of her spring and summer collection had been handmade by women in Malaysia and Morocco. Each garment was intended to carry the story of its maker. She framed this approach through her own understanding of faith and responsibility, and wanted customers to consider the people involved in producing clothing.

She also called for more design education and attention to garment construction, expressing frustration with repetitive modest collections. Those comments describe an ambition for creative and working practices, not independently verified labour conditions. These questions also run through creativity and choice in Islamic fashion, which considers the different perspectives of designers, retailers and wearers.

Hilal Ibrahim: a Toronto encounter in 2022

Canada’s scarf landscape also includes encounters with visiting designers. STYLE Canada reported from Hilal Ibrahim’s June 2022 collection event at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre. The Henna & Hijabs presentation included opportunities for guests to have henna and fashion illustrations done while meeting the person behind the collection.

In the interview, Ibrahim explained that she had begun designing for friends and family after finding that headscarves were missing from places where she could assemble the rest of an outfit. For the spring and summer 2022 collection, she described lighter colours and new prints intended for occasions including weddings, graduations and Eid.

She also spoke about seeing the scarves worn around necks, over shoulders and attached to bags, alongside their use as hijabs. Those were her observations of how wearers interpreted the pieces. The Toronto event brought that collection and its designer into a local conversation about representation and access to fashion. Its interest lies in the dated meeting of a scarf collection with a Canadian audience, including the varied uses the designer herself had noticed.

Scarves in art and research

Zahraa Sbaiti: a fleur-de-lys on a hijab

Montreal artist Zahraa Sbaiti made a headscarf central to her work My Crown. In Aicha Lasfar’s February 2017 interview for Muslim Link, she explained that the project began as a textile class performance. She sewed a fleur-de-lys design onto a white hijab and wore it while seated before a written statement questioning her choice to cover.

The idea later became a painted self-portrait, with a blue scarf and yellow fleur-de-lys. It appeared in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition Art of Inclusion: Muslim Youth Take the Lead. The change of medium carried the headscarf’s message from a worn textile into a portrait.

For Sbaiti, the symbol expressed her attachment to Quebec and her determination to keep wearing hijab. She described harassment and rejected the suggestion that being veiled made her less Québécoise. The work joins those identities in one visible object. Colour, a sewn motif and the title’s royal association supported an argument the artist made about her own belonging, giving the scarf’s design a particular personal and political purpose.

Faisa Omer: the scarf within a portrait

Photographer Faisa Omer gives headscarves a composed place within portraits. Timiro Mohamed’s February 2022 BlackFlash profile introduces the artist, raised in Ottawa and working from an Edmonton studio. Omer described photographing Somali women and exploring how contemporary and traditional clothing could express identity through modest dress.

The accompanying description of Ahlam, dated 2021, records a red backdrop, a white outer scarf and a black and red silk scarf tied beneath it. Patterned fabric covers the sitter’s other shoulder. The different layers are therefore part of the portrait’s structure: white frames the face, while the darker scarf connects visually with the background’s colour.

Omer explained that she wanted to honour both the hijab and the individual being photographed. She remembered rarely seeing Black or hijab wearing women on magazine covers when she was younger, and wanted her own work to contribute different images. Her portrait practice offers a specific artistic response to that experience. The guide to hijab photography, consent and lighting develops practical questions about making portraits with care.

SuKha: headpieces shaped through performance

Performance artist SuKha describes her headpieces as scarves, choosing not to call them hijabs. That distinction is central to Hasadri Freeman’s INFRINGE interview. The artist’s upbringing as a Bangladeshi immigrant to Canada, alongside interests in music, fashion and online imagery, informs an appearance she continually develops for herself.

She explained how long hairstyles and South Asian ways of draping cloth influence her forms. A design with two scarf-covered buns begins with the arrangement of her hair beneath them. Light chiffon is a personal favourite because she likes how it responds to movement. Material and underlying shape work together to produce the headpiece.

Anime characters and the avatars she once styled in role playing games supplied further visual references. As she gained independence, she began translating those imagined looks into clothes she could wear. SuKha treats that process as an artistic practice and resists other people deciding what her appearance must signify. Her account adds experimental performance to the range of scarf expression documented in Canada, while preserving her own vocabulary for the cloth and the identity she presents.

Women Undercover: listening through garments

The Women Undercover project at Toronto Metropolitan University made wearers’ accounts the starting point for studying modest fashion. Its institutional record describes sixteen wardrobe interviews conducted in autumn 2018 with Muslim women aged 23 to 73. All wore headscarves and came from a range of cultural backgrounds.

Participants guided the researcher through their wardrobes, explaining the feelings and memories attached to their clothes. The setting made particular garments available for discussion, alongside experiences that might be positive or difficult. A digital storytelling workshop followed in January 2019, facilitated by lead researcher Romana Mirza, and the project records stories created by participants.

The method matters because it connects a visible garment with the wearer’s own explanation. A scarf’s appearance alone cannot supply the memories a person attaches to it, or the place it has among her other clothes. This small qualitative project was not a survey of all Canadian women. It nevertheless documents a way of studying headscarves through detailed personal accounts, giving clothing, memory and the wearer’s authorship room to appear together.