Hijab in Advertising: Visibility, Belonging and What the Evidence Shows

When a fashion advert includes a woman in hijab, you may notice more than the clothes. Perhaps the scene feels welcoming, or the styling reminds you of something you already wear. You might admire the photograph yet feel that the woman’s life has been reduced to her scarf. You might simply want to know where the coat is from. Those responses ask different things of the same image.

That is why the impact of hijab advertising deserves a more careful answer than a promise that every campaign builds confidence or breaks down prejudice. Commercial visibility is observable. How people receive it needs to be heard from them. Lasting changes in attitudes, opportunities or everyday treatment need further evidence.

Campaign records, interviews and research offer useful pieces of that answer. Read together, they leave room for the pleasure of feeling included, the reservations about being marketed to and the possibility that two women can look at the same advert and understand it quite differently.

Start with the kind of impact being claimed

The word “impact” can cover several outcomes that should be considered separately. An advert may give a hijab-wearing model a visible role. A viewer may say she feels recognised. Another person may become interested in the brand. A commentator may hope the campaign will improve attitudes towards Muslim women. Evidence for one of these does not automatically establish the others.

Imagine a campaign report announcing a large audience and strong engagement. That might tell you something about distribution and response on a particular platform. To understand belonging, you would need to know what viewers said about their own experience. To understand whether prejudice changed, you would need a study that actually examined that question.

Question	Evidence that helps answer it	What remains open
Was a woman in hijab included?	The complete advert, its date, credits and the role shown.	How different viewers understood the portrayal.
Did someone feel represented?	Her own account, with the context in which it was given.	Whether other people felt the same way.
Did viewers respond commercially?	A clearly described measure, such as interest in the brand or reported intention to buy.	Whether anyone bought, and whether the response lasted.
Did wider attitudes or opportunities change?	Research measuring the relevant outcome, with an appropriate comparison and follow-up.	How far any finding applies beyond that study.

These distinctions make positive findings more useful. A woman describing a moment of recognition does not need her experience enlarged into a claim about everyone. Equally, a campaign’s lack of evidence about wider social change does not invalidate an individual’s enjoyment of it.

What the campaign itself tells us

A good place to begin is the original commercial context. H&M’s launch announcement of 3 September 2015 described its Close the Loop film in connection with clothing collection and recycling. Mariah Idrissi appeared in that campaign wearing hijab. The image was therefore part of a particular brand message, even though viewers could take a broader meaning from seeing her there. The launch record establishes what the company presented; it does not measure the campaign’s social effects.

A different example is Nike’s 2017 What will they say about you? film. The agency that made it, Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, describes a campaign for Nike Middle East featuring five women, including figure skater Zahra Lari, parkour trainer Amal Mourad and fencer Inès Boubakri. Its account places the women’s sporting ambitions and responses to criticism at the centre of the creative idea.

That agency description is evidence of the campaign’s intended message. It cannot tell us how every viewer responded, whether the film encouraged someone to take up a sport or whether a sceptical viewer changed their mind. Those would be separate questions requiring evidence from the audience.

Looking at the full setting also prevents a single still from carrying more meaning than it can support. A picture cropped from a film may omit the product, the other participants, the voice-over or the final message. Before calling an image a statement about Muslim women, check what the complete piece actually says. A fashion image, an editorial cover and a paid campaign can all be visible, but they do different work and should be identified accurately.

Recognition can matter without producing one shared response

There are documented personal accounts of positive reception. In Susannah Butter’s Evening Standard interview with Mariah Idrissi, published on 29 September 2015, Idrissi described messages from girls who said seeing her had made them feel more confident about wearing their scarves. She also reported criticism and racist comments. This is her account of feedback she received, rather than a representative survey or a measurement of lasting change.

The distinction is useful when discussing confidence. Someone saying that an image encouraged her gives us a reason to take that experience seriously. It does not tell us how long the feeling lasted, what else was happening in her life or how many viewers felt differently. We can acknowledge the account at the level at which it was given.

More detailed interviews can reveal responses that a celebratory headline leaves out. For her MSc research, published by Media@LSE in 2020 as The Branded Muslim Woman, Nuha Fayaz interviewed 18 British Muslim women aged 18–30, recruited through purposive sampling. The group included women who wore hijab, women who did not and women who wore niqab. They discussed advertising and Muslim bloggers’ self-presentation, expressing differing views about modesty, representation and messages of empowerment.

Some welcomed strong portrayals; others questioned the way brands framed that strength. Fayaz also found concerns about hijab-wearing women being expected to represent a whole community, alongside feelings of exclusion among participants who did not wear hijab. The dissertation explores these accounts in depth, but its small, deliberately selected sample cannot establish how common each view is among British Muslim women.

That range of accounts argues for leaving space in the conversation. If a friend likes a campaign, ask what she recognised in it. It might be the clothing, a familiar activity, the woman’s manner or the simple fact that she was included. If another friend dislikes it, ask what felt missing or uncomfortable. Agreement is not a prerequisite for listening carefully.

A useful discussion stays close to the image and the person’s own response. “I liked seeing her shown as a colleague” is specific. “This is what Muslim women want” makes a much larger claim. The first can open a conversation; the second leaves very little room for someone whose experience differs.

A headscarf is one part of the portrayal

Counting appearances answers an important but limited question. To understand what is being represented, look at the woman’s role as well. Is she speaking, choosing, working or simply standing in the background? Does the story give her a purpose beyond making the group look varied? Is anything known about her through the campaign apart from what she wears?

The 2021 paper Veiled on Instagram?, by Ahmed Taher, Doaa M. El-Banna, Noha Alaa El Dine and Naila Hamdy, examined 200 branded Instagram images arranged in pairs showing veiled and nonveiled women. Half the images represented Egyptian brands and half Western brands. Researchers coded features of the portrayals rather than asking viewers how they felt.

Across the overall comparison of veiled and nonveiled models, four of the five coded categories showed no statistically significant difference. The difference was in the researchers’ composite measure of body display, which included clothing exposure, make-up, nail polish and posture. This was a selected snapshot gathered over 12 days, and the authors noted that the posts were not necessarily paid advertisements. Its findings describe those images; they do not demonstrate changes in viewers’ confidence or prejudice.

For an everyday reader, a helpful response is to describe what is visible before assigning a message to it. A woman holding a tennis racket might be a player in the story, a model posing with a prop or someone shown watching a match. The surrounding sequence and caption matter. The scarf alone cannot settle which role she has been given.

Nor can the finished photograph establish everything about the person’s experience making it. Questions about agreement, styling boundaries and professional decision-making belong alongside audience interpretation. Our guide to models, casting and creative control in hijab fashion campaigns examines that working relationship in detail.

Keep commercial response and social change separate

An advert can be assessed for several reasons. A company may want to know whether viewers remember its name. A researcher may examine whether viewers like the message. A community discussion may ask whether people feel welcome. These are legitimate questions, but the answer to one should not quietly become the answer to another.

A 2016 paper by Hamisah Hasan and colleagues in the Malaysian Journal of Communication illustrates the distinction. It studied 76 women attending a workshop in Kuala Lumpur in May 2012. After watching four television adverts for shampoo, toothpaste, noodles and financial services, they completed questionnaires. Each advert included Islamic cues. The researchers reported relationships between responses to the adverts and stated purchase intention.

The design used one group tested after viewing, with no comparison group or earlier measurement. The adverts also differed in products and content. Those features limit what can be attributed specifically to hijab. The study concerned advertising responses and purchase intention; it did not test whether discrimination fell or opportunities for Muslim women improved.

This matters whenever a commercial success story is presented as evidence of social progress. A stated intention to buy is an answer to a question at a particular time. A completed purchase is a different observation. Feeling more comfortable with Muslim colleagues, supporting someone’s freedom to dress as she chooses or changing a recruitment decision would each require their own evidence.

A practical way to read any impact claim is to look for the verb. Did participants notice, like, intend, report or do something? Then look for the people being described. A study of customers already interested in a brand cannot automatically speak for people who avoid it. A discussion with young adults cannot establish the response of every age group.

Careful language keeps the useful finding intact. If the evidence concerns people’s stated reactions, describe those reactions. If someone wants to claim a lasting change, ask whether the research followed people over time and what else could explain the result. This is a way of making the claim understandable, rather than dismissing it because it falls short of a larger ambition.

Global visibility still reaches people in particular places

A campaign circulating internationally does not come with one universal meaning attached. Consider two hypothetical viewers. One rarely sees a woman dressed like her in the advertising she encounters. Another sees hijab regularly and is more interested in whether the story reflects her working life. The same appearance could be significant to the first and unremarkable to the second.

These are possibilities to explore, rather than fixed descriptions of countries or communities. A passport, a language or a way of dressing cannot tell us in advance what someone will think. When research is carried out in a particular place, that setting should remain visible in the way the findings are discussed.

Cultural exchange is a reasonable hope for an advert, but it needs a clear meaning. Does a viewer learn a person’s name, hear about her work or encounter an unfamiliar activity? Or does the campaign rely on a recognisable item of clothing while saying little about the woman herself? Those are different opportunities for understanding.

It is also worth distinguishing the model’s own account from meanings supplied by viewers. If she explains what her clothing or participation means to her, that is valuable first-person context. A stranger’s interpretation of a photograph should not be presented as her belief, intention or religious position. Respectful interest leaves room for what the image cannot tell us.

Read comments and influencer responses in context

A comment section can show the kinds of responses that some people chose to make public. It cannot, on its own, describe everyone who saw the advert. People who stayed silent are absent from that record, and a collection of enthusiastic or hostile comments gives no reliable account of their views.

The surrounding post matters too. A creator might share a campaign because she likes the styling, knows someone involved, wants to criticise its message or has a commercial arrangement connected with it. The share alone does not establish which explanation applies. Read the caption and any disclosure before treating the post as an endorsement of everything the campaign might stand for.

Our article on hijab influencers, sponsored posts and trust covers the commercial context and practical buying questions. For understanding a campaign’s wider reception, the narrower task is to identify whose response you are reading and what, exactly, that person is responding to.

There is also a difference between criticism of the advertising and judgement of the woman shown. Someone can question the wording, casting pattern or commercial message without speculating about a stranger’s sincerity. Keeping the discussion focused on what was published makes it easier to compare interpretations without turning one participant into an answer for an entire community.

Look beyond the moment of recognition

What would more meaningful progress look like? Start by naming the outcome you care about. If it is broader representation, look across a series of campaigns rather than one image. If it is a better experience for the people involved, their accounts matter. If it is easier access to clothing or activities, look for evidence about that access.

In a Soigné Middle East interview published on 4 September 2025, Idrissi welcomed a broader understanding of modest dressing while saying she wanted campaigns to reflect its place in people’s lives more fully. Her answer also called attention to production ethics. This is one participant’s considered view of the industry, not a survey of what all modest dressers need.

For readers, it offers a useful question: what happens after the photograph has caught your attention? A beautifully presented outfit might introduce you to an idea. Whether the advertised clothing serves your needs still depends on the actual garment, its information and your circumstances. Feeling included in the message need not remove ordinary questions about what is being sold.

The same care applies to praise for a business. Recognition of a campaign’s thoughtful portrayal can be specific without becoming approval of every company practice. Our discussion of inclusion and tokenism in beauty advertising considers those broader questions of conduct. Keeping each assessment clear helps avoid asking one image to prove an entire business deserves trust.

A fairer way to talk about the future

The future of hijab advertising should not be judged only by how many campaigns receive attention. A more useful ambition is for the work to allow a wider range of people, activities and experiences to be seen, and for claims about its effects to be supported by evidence from the people concerned.

That means asking more precise questions. Which viewers felt represented, and why? Who felt overlooked? Did someone’s response change after seeing the complete campaign rather than a cropped image? Was any reported encouragement sustained? If a company claims its work challenged prejudice, what did it measure, and among whom?

These questions leave room for both hope and uncertainty. A campaign can be a welcome moment for an individual without settling the wider relationship between fashion, faith and public attitudes. Another viewer can raise a thoughtful objection without speaking for every Muslim woman or denying someone else’s enjoyment.

When an advert stays with you, begin with what you actually saw and how it made you feel. Then listen to the people involved and look closely at the evidence behind larger claims. That gives recognition its proper value while allowing women’s lives, choices and experiences to remain larger than the images used to sell to them.