Islamic Fashion in Philadelphia: Makers, Clothes and Community

From neighbourhood shops to personal wardrobes

Sadika Fashions

At Sadika Fashions in Germantown, a clothing purchase could sit alongside conversation, advice and prayer. Sonji Milburn’s 2017 report for Philadelphia Neighborhoods traced the boutique to Linda Cowins, known as Saadiqah, who began sewing for herself after becoming Muslim. Her stepdaughter Shahadah Schley helped her work reach other people; in 1997, the family opened a shop.

The business combined those beginnings in home sewing with clothing imported from Saudi Arabia. Customer Taheera Bint Brooks, who had visited for almost seventeen years, described a relationship closer to family than an ordinary transaction. Saadiqah spoke about women taking out prayer rugs and praying together inside the boutique. Its twentieth anniversary brought 120 people to a January luncheon despite snow.

That account gives Philadelphia’s Islamic fashion a recognisable neighbourhood setting: a family business, returning customers and garments chosen within relationships that developed over years. The pleasure of getting dressed and the wish to practise faith occupied the same room.

Sonji Milburn, Philadelphia Neighborhoods, 18 May 2017.

An-Noor:31

An-Noor:31’s own history places its first Philadelphia premises in June 2011. The company describes bringing together fashion industry management training, experience as a customer and travel to Saudi Arabia to establish a boutique for Muslim women.

Its account of a subsequent studio, dated to 2018, concentrates on the surroundings of a purchase: greater privacy, how garments were made and displayed, and how finished purchases were packaged. These are the company’s descriptions of its intentions and history. They identify a particular idea of service, in which the space around the clothes received attention alongside the clothes themselves.

An-Noor:31, “Our Story”, undated company account.

A visiting abaya collection

Philadelphia also attracted labels based elsewhere. In May 2018, Elizabeth Wellington reported that New York’s Al Shams Apparel was preparing its first Philadelphia pop-up at Petite Fete II in Roxborough. The announced date was 13 May; her article was a preview of the event.

Founder Kim Shamsiddin wanted customers to handle garments and meet the people behind them. The described collection included solid colours and ombré effects, loose abayas, headscarves and sleeveless dresses, with options above US size 16. Shamsiddin also planned to bring black designs that she said appealed to her Philadelphia customers.

Shamsiddin had developed her label after finding that available hemlines and shapes did not suit the coverage she wanted. She described sourcing and manufacturing its garments in the United Arab Emirates. Her Philadelphia plans connected that production with direct discussion between designer and wearer: an opportunity to consider the cloth and the proportions of an overgarment together.

Elizabeth Wellington, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 May 2018.

Designing coverage on individual terms

Asma Bibi’s colour and silhouette

For Asma Bibi, making clothes began with a very specific frustration. Recalling her Philadelphia adolescence in a 2021 VoyageATL interview, she described wanting her wardrobe to match her colourful personality. At about fifteen, she found the imported selections available to her too similar to those offered to her mother. She wanted hot pink and chains.

Bibi sewed for herself, then received requests from friends, relatives and their wider circles. Custom work taught her to respond to individual wishes, but she also wanted to develop designs of her own. Naming the label Hijabi Pop in 2017 gave those ambitions a shared identity.

Her career included a move to Atlanta. The Philadelphia experiences remained part of the explanation she gave for her work: a young woman’s dissatisfaction became the starting point for making. She also described the cost of pursuing that work, including leaving a corporate career and moving back in with family to redirect money into the business.

VoyageATL, Asma Bibi interview, 27 January 2021; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4 December 2019.

In a separate 2019 interview, Bibi explained the construction choices behind her clothes for Project Runway. She favoured the movement of a circle skirt and kept her designs ankle length. Her aim was to find a volume between close fitting and excessively billowing; fabric choice remained an area for experimentation.

These were her own working criteria for coverage. They affected both the garment and the circumstances of making it. Bibi described arranging her accommodation so that she could remove her scarf among women at the end of a working day. When fellow contestant Nancy Volpe-Beringer asked whether non-Muslim women could wear her designs, Bibi welcomed them.

The interview makes room for two connected considerations: what a designer wants a skirt to do, and what she needs around her to work comfortably.

Elizabeth Wellington, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 December 2019.

For other approaches to the relationship between faith and design, explore six creative voices in modest fashion.

Renee Hill’s own description

Renee Hill offered a different account of her work in a March 2019 interview. Although she is Muslim, she explicitly resisted having Harx 4 defined as a modest-fashion label. She wanted attention directed towards the clothes and the visual ideas behind them.

Her description of Harx 4 emphasised sportswear for women and men, personal expression and texture. For a collection called Dark Shadows, she spoke about combining surfaces to create an impression of shadow. Light and flowers could provide starting points for a design. Pattern-making and tailoring were practical foundations: after studying at Moore College, she developed those skills at Philadelphia’s MADE Institute.

Hill had shown at Philadelphia Fashion Week; the interview appeared ahead of the television premiere of her Project Runway season. It also recorded her move from King of Prussia to North Jersey. Her Philadelphia connection belongs in the city’s fashion history, alongside her insistence on naming her practice for herself.

Elizabeth Wellington, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 March 2019.

A’iShah El’Shabazz’s creative brief

In September 2025, Philadelphia designer A’iShah El’Shabazz explained the thinking behind Influence Athleisure to MadameNoire. She wanted clothing that felt comfortable, satisfied her preferences for coverage and expressed her taste. Finding all three in one garment had been difficult.

Her response was to treat limits as a design question. Working towards a particular covered look, she argued, required more invention in the fabric, structure and detail of a piece. She also described modesty as something that could change with an individual’s personality, rather than a single fixed appearance.

The interview looked ahead to a New York runway presentation. Its clearest evidence is El’Shabazz’s own account of intention: faith brought meaning to her fashion, while the wearer’s individuality remained part of the brief. That combination helps explain why a city’s Muslim designers can share an interest in coverage and still approach the design process in different ways.

Taylor Knight, MadameNoire, 10 September 2025.

A fastening designed around eating

A small change to a face veil was the starting point for ZipNiqab. Reporting in 2014, Samantha Melamed described the design developed by Aqil Jones, Saiyd Muhammed and Ladia Hinton: the veil opened with a zip, and the released fabric could be fastened behind the head. The intention was to let its wearer eat without repeatedly lifting or holding the fabric.

The partners used their savings to fund an initial production run in 2011. Their difficulties then shifted from design to replenishment. Dark colours sold out, while lighter colours remained; Jones said they lacked the money to order more of what customers wanted.

He also described avoiding conventional bank loans because of his religious convictions. In this venture, an everyday wearing problem, colour preferences and the financing of production became inseparable. Customers might want the same practical opening in a different colour; meeting that preference required another production run.

Samantha Melamed, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 February 2014.

Making textiles and sustaining a label

Melanie Hasan’s changing wardrobe

Melanie Hasan’s interest in making grew from skills learned at home. She and her mother sewed messenger bags for other pupils at Philadelphia High School for Girls, helping pay for extracurricular activities. Her mother also introduced her to plants and herbs.

When Hasan became Muslim in 2014, she began sewing clothes that would accommodate both her changed approach to dress and her lively personality. She told WHYY that the clothing she found did not express how bold and cheerful she felt. Making a wardrobe gave her another way to answer that problem.

Textile study later broadened her methods. For a capsule collection at Moore College of Art & Design, she worked with embroidery, block printing and natural dyeing. The name Modest Transitions referred to her movement towards modest dress while allowing for other changes in people’s lives. By the time WHYY visited in March 2022, her recently opened Fishtown shop had brought those interests into a shared place.

Elizabeth Estrada, WHYY, 18 March 2022.

Colour from plants

Hasan’s 2019 account for Art Star gives a closer view of the textile work. She described a practice shared with her husband Nur, with local making and botanical dyeing in a home studio and shared space at the Handcraft Workshop in Mount Airy.

Her colours responded to the season, the plant material and the results of experiments. An unexpected outcome could become a combination she wanted to keep. She named hemp, bamboo, cotton and lyocell among the fabrics in her practice, and discussed reusing cloth alongside trying to use material economically.

Scarves were central to the purpose she described. Hasan wanted a garment associated with separation in some people’s minds to become an opportunity for conversation between wearers. In that account, the experiment with colour and the social intention belonged together: curiosity about how a scarf had been dyed could begin an exchange about the person wearing it.

Melanie Hasan, Art Star maker account, 12 November 2019.

From jacket offcuts to a shared table

A June 2022 Philadelphia Citizen report followed the materials further. Hasan had turned scraps from naturally dyed jackets into purses and used other small pieces in wall art. The shape and scale of a leftover piece could lead to a different object.

The arrangement of her studio made stages of making visible. Supplies such as yarn, seeds, dried flowers and books occupied one side; finished scarves, sweaters and headbands occupied the other. A central table held workshops. The room put materials, completed work and teaching close together.

Other makers participated too. The report described jewellery by Philadelphia maker Escere and Richie Lopez preparing to teach embroidery and weaving. Lopez followed Hasan online and received one of her dyed needle cases from his partner. When he saw the studio was seeking workshop leaders, he signed up, extending its activity beyond the founder’s own garments.

Courtney DuChene, The Philadelphia Citizen, 6 June 2022.

Learning to repeat the work

Behind that shared room was the question of whether textile making could sustain a livelihood. In February 2022, Joseph DiStefano reported on Hasan’s participation in NextFab’s Artisan Accelerator. She had been selling garments in city boutiques, but wanted to make enough clothing consistently to support her family and reach customers who valued her work.

The programme brought craftspeople into contact with accountants, marketing specialists and people experienced in business development. Hasan also valued being among artists who understood the time involved in making. Some of the classes she attended during the preceding year had taken place remotely.

At the date of the report, her physical shop was still preparing to open. The account catches a particular stage between producing admired individual pieces and establishing a continuing business. For clothing made through repeated experiments with colour, questions of time, output and income had to sit alongside the pleasure of the finished fabric.

Joseph DiStefano, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 February 2022.

Niddarah Winters and Hijabified

Niddarah Winters’s route into clothing involved a different working life. In a 2021 interview with Jenice Armstrong, she described building Hijabified while employed by Philadelphia’s Streets Department. The label included tunics and head coverings; the report recorded bright pink, purple and lime green alongside denim among the popular head-covering choices.

Production had brought expensive lessons. An earlier T-shirt venture had struggled, and a shipment in the wrong sizes left her with merchandise she could not sell as intended after borrowing money to pay for it. By July 2021, she was expanding a Germantown Avenue showroom towards a retail space.

Winters had moved from sanitation work to operating an asphalt truck, but had retained her city job. Her account makes the labour behind a local collection tangible: wages from another occupation, money committed before garments arrived, and the consequences when a production order went wrong. The colours on the rail were supported by that continuing effort.

Jenice Armstrong, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 6 July 2021.

The work behind a styled image

Saniyyah Bilal’s Philadelphia education

Saniyyah Bilal found a place in fashion through assembling clothes rather than designing a collection. The Philadelphia native studied fashion industry management and apparel business at Philadelphia University. In a 2018 interview with Taylor Bennett, she recalled exploring different roles because she knew she did not want to be a designer.

Working with a designer, she selected outfits, accessories and shoes for groups of ten to twelve models on shoots. She gradually recognised that the work had a name: styling. Building a portfolio meant developing creative concepts with photographers, models and other specialists.

By then, Bilal’s work connected Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Her local ties included mentorship from Faatimah Gamble, teaching fashion styling through the youth organisation SCH CAPA and serving as an Alimah Scout troop leader. The account places a Muslim woman’s participation in fashion across several roles: creating an image, understanding the business around it and passing knowledge to younger people.

Taylor Bennett, She’s Our Rock, 23 March 2018.

What the camera does not show

Bilal described the practical sequence behind her styling in a separate interview with Sola Onitiri. An idea or client brief came first. She then sourced clothing with the concept, size, colour requirements and budget in mind, developing the hair and make-up direction alongside the outfits.

Film introduced particular constraints. Colours and prints had to work with lighting, camera settings, the actors’ positions and the character being portrayed. A fashionable item was useful only if it served that scene.

Borrowed clothing also required careful administration. Bilal inspected pieces for existing marks, recorded items and prices, arranged fittings and sometimes sourced replacements. Temporary hems and protected shoe soles helped her return borrowed items in good condition. Her description includes carrying garment bags, dismantling racks and making returns after the photograph or scene was finished. It gives the polished image a material background: fitting, handling and accounting for each piece that helped create it.

Sola Onitiri, Now Let’s Get Going, 23 October 2017.

Runways and gatherings

A local observer in 2013

Philadelphia history teacher and fashion blogger Keziah Ridgeway described the city’s clothing culture from within it in a 2013 account for Common Ground News Service. Her examples included Show Me How 2 Cover, held on 2 March that year, where stores and seamstresses presented their work to women attending the convention.

Ridgeway noticed outfits assembled across different sources: abayas and face veils worn with headscarves, bags and colourful heels selected from other parts of the fashion market. The combinations were personal choices, recorded by a local observer.

She also described Saniyyah Bilal’s Hijabi Couture segment at another showcase, where the headscarf became the focus of a runway presentation. Blogs such as Philly Hijabis Killing It and local seamstresses, including M’Squared Fashunz, were part of the same conversation. Ridgeway recorded an exchange that took place online as well as through women presenting complete outfits in person.

Keziah Ridgeway, Common Ground News Service, republished by IQRA, 7 April 2013.

The UMM Sisters Recognition Fashion Show

The United Muslim Masjid’s nineteenth Sisters Recognition Fashion Show took place in the Hilton City Line ballroom in 2017. Denise Clay reported garments ranging from floor-length furs to athletic wear, brought together under the Flight 19 Global Tour theme. Paris, London, Ghana, Jamaica, Dubai and New York supplied the imagined itinerary.

Designer and event chair Lubna Muhammad explained that women led by Faatimah Gamble had revived the gathering after another mosque’s show ended. The early UMM event had occupied the Clef Club before moving to a larger setting.

The 2017 programme brought together designers including Gwendolyn Dawan, Latifa Ihsan Ali and Netfah Amina-Afia. It also recognised service to the community: JoAnn Jumannah Davis received a fashion heritage award for her textile shop and sewing teaching. The show served as a fundraiser for the mosque’s summer educational programme. Clothing, recognition and fundraising were organised into one occasion, with the runway giving the audience a way to enjoy the makers’ work together.

Denise Clay, The Philadelphia Sunday Sun, 26 May 2017.

Hijabified at Dilworth Park

WHYY’s October 2018 report placed Hijabified inside the activity of Philadelphia Fashion Week at Dilworth Park. Its text and captions followed fitting, quick changes and last adjustments backstage: designers checked garments, models waited their turn and stylists prepared the next look.

Within that larger show, Niddarah Winters explained that she wanted covered wearers to feel confident and present. Her label occupied the same runway setting as the other collections, with its own audience and intention.

Backstage lead assistant Rita Randolph spoke about opportunities for women of colour. Bethel’s captions recorded Reginald Lee adjusting eveningwear and Julia Turner Lowe making changes before the show. Those preparations placed Hijabified within an active city fashion event, where the finished collection depended on many kinds of work behind the scenes.

Kriston Jae Bethel, WHYY, 1 October 2018.

Proud Muslimah in a plus-size showcase

The same season brought another setting for a Muslim fashion label. Denise Clay’s account of the 2018 Lov’n My Curves show named Proud Muslimah by Naseehah among its participants. Organised by Marquita Williams as part of Philadelphia Fashion Week, the event gathered labels serving a range of fuller figures.

Williams had produced Lov’n My Curves independently before bringing it into Fashion Week.

Denise Clay, The Philadelphia Sunday Sun, 5 October 2018.

Appearance and community beyond the runway

Privacy at Hstylze

Personal appearance also depended on spaces where women could choose to uncover. Meghan Bobrowsky’s 2018 report on Hstylze described Hullema Reddick, known as the Covered Colorist, wearing a face veil outside her East Falls salon and working without it among women inside.

Clients explained the practical importance of that arrangement. Aliya Khabir, from Hunting Park, valued being able to relax without an unexpected male visitor entering. Sandra Baker travelled from Chester and specifically valued the locked door. The privacy allowed her to have her hair done without worrying about being seen uncovered.

Reddick’s work concerned hair rather than garment design, but it adds a useful dimension to the surrounding fashion culture. A covered public appearance could coexist with enjoyment of hair colour, jewellery and make-up in another setting. The women interviewed described their own preferences, and the salon provided a space in which those preferences could be respected.

Meghan Bobrowsky, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 June 2018.

African textile connections

The city’s wider African textile culture provides another setting for creative exchange. In 2023, Tamala Edwards reported on West Philadelphia’s InI Collective, where Netfah Amina-Afia described teaching women to wrap their hair and bodies.

AtiyaOla Sankofa recalled arriving in Philadelphia in 1969 during the Black Arts Movement and making kaftans and dashikis. She discussed the Mood II, a wrap using less cloth that she helped develop in the early 1970s. Sahara Abdul Hakim had left work as a tailor in the garment industry to sew with Sankofa, making clothes through which they could express their African heritage.

These accounts concern African cultural dress in its own right. They add knowledge about wrapping, saved fabrics and making for an intended wearer to the city’s textile history, while leaving each participant’s identity and relationship to those clothes in her own terms.

Tamala Edwards, 6ABC, 19 January 2023.

Fashion supporting young people

Faatimah and Kenneth Gamble’s fifth Evening of Style and Grace brought fashion into a South Philadelphia school on 7 December 2017. Patricia Gilliam Clifford’s report described the event at Universal Audenreid Charter High School, where students prepared reception food and performed for guests.

The runway included menswear, bow ties by Malcolm Jenkins and work associated with Drexel University’s design college. Young people also took formal roles in presenting the evening: Amirah Munson, a participant in Pearls of Wisdom, and school student Christopher I. Roberts served as hosts.

The fundraiser was held for Pearls of Wisdom, From Boys to Men and the school’s culinary arts programme. It was a city fashion occasion, with clothing helping to bring guests, students and community programmes together. Its place here comes through that organising work and the opportunity for young people to participate in a public event.

Patricia Gilliam Clifford, The Philadelphia Sunday Sun, 15 December 2017.

Eid clothes chosen with care

An Eid photo essay from June 2018 brings the story back to individual wardrobes. Cassie Owens and photographer David Maialetti recorded choices made for the holiday across Philadelphia: decorated overgarments, coordinated colours and outfits assembled piece by piece.

At Chalmers Park, Marquis Carr of Strawberry Mansion described finding a shirt that worked with his trainers. Shawna Miller chose a beaded shirt for her young son, Mu’aawiyah Bowker, partly because its colour matched the family’s outfits. Salimah James of West Philadelphia explained that dressing well carried meaning through her Muslim identity.

These small decisions give celebration its personal scale: the beadwork a parent notices, a colour shared by a family, shoes that bring separate pieces together. They also leave space for different tastes within a shared occasion.

Cassie Owens and David Maialetti, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 June 2018.

Related first-person accounts in our article on hijab and community in the Southern United States explore how other women describe faith, place and their own choices of dress.