by There was a time when the global fashion conversation seemed to offer women two very different choices: reveal the body and call it confidence, or cover the body and risk being interpreted as constrained.
Middle Eastern women have increasingly challenged that binary.
Across Instagram, TikTok, fashion campaigns, athletic communities, beauty platforms, and international runways, a new generation of Arab and Middle Eastern creators is demonstrating that modesty does not have to mean invisibility—and that body confidence does not have to require exposure.
The shift is culturally significant because it changes the question.
Instead of asking, “How much of a woman’s body should she show to be confident?”, these creators are helping audiences ask something more fundamental:
“Who gets to decide what confidence looks like on a woman’s body?”
That distinction matters.
For some women, modest dressing is connected to religious faith. For others, it is cultural inheritance, personal comfort, aesthetics, or simply a preference for particular silhouettes. For many, these motivations overlap. There is no single Middle Eastern relationship with modesty, just as there is no universal definition of femininity or body confidence.
Yet social media has created an unusual cultural space in which these different interpretations can become visible simultaneously.
A woman in Riyadh can see another woman in Dubai styling an oversized abaya with sneakers. A hijabi athlete can see herself represented in sportswear. A young Muslim woman in London can watch a creator from the Gulf combine tailoring, streetwear, and a headscarf. A woman who simply prefers more coverage can discover that dressing modestly does not require disappearing into shapeless clothing.
The result is not merely a fashion trend.
It is a renegotiation of visibility.
Modesty Was Never One Thing
The word “modesty” is often treated as though it has one fixed meaning.
In reality, its interpretation varies enormously across families, societies, generations, religious traditions, and individuals.
Within Middle Eastern societies, clothing can communicate faith, family traditions, nationality, social environment, profession, class, taste, occasion, and personality. The same garment can carry different meanings depending on who wears it and where.
An abaya, for example, can be a religiously meaningful garment, an everyday staple, an expression of regional identity, a luxury fashion piece, or a canvas for experimentation. A hijab can similarly be experienced as faith, identity, comfort, belonging, personal conviction, or some combination of these.
This complexity is important because Western conversations about modest fashion have sometimes positioned Middle Eastern women as though they are simply responding to an external fashion movement.
But modest clothing predates the influencer economy by centuries.
What social media has changed is not the existence of modesty. It has changed who gets to narrate it.
Instead of fashion magazines, retailers, or outsiders deciding what covered women look like, women themselves are increasingly producing the imagery.
Vogue Arabia’s recent coverage of modest creatives illustrates precisely this fragmentation. Its 2026 profile of creatives including Jasmin Omar, Noor-u-Nisa Khan, Abrar Mohamed, and Aminah Ali emphasizes that there is no singular modest aesthetic. Their approaches range from fashion experimentation to faith-conscious dressing and culturally informed personal style. (Vogue Arabia)
That diversity is itself a form of representation.
From “Covered” to Fully Seen
One of the most important cultural shifts is the movement away from defining women primarily through the fact that they are covered.
For years, hijabi women in mainstream media were often presented as a visual category first and individuals second.
The headscarf became the story.
The woman wearing it became secondary.
Influencers have disrupted that arrangement by building platforms around their entire identities: their careers, humor, fashion preferences, entrepreneurship, travel, athletic ambitions, creativity, friendships, beauty interests, and political or social concerns.
Leena Al Ghouti provides an early and influential example.
The UAE-born Palestinian-Canadian creator has repeatedly rejected the idea that her public identity should be reduced to being “the covered girl.” In a 2018 interview with Vogue, she explained that for her, modest dressing was fundamentally connected with confidence and that being covered did not prevent someone from looking fashionable or contemporary. (Vogue)
Her approach is culturally interesting because it separates coverage from limitation.
Oversized shirts, loose tailoring, sneakers, trousers, structured jackets, and layered pieces become tools of styling rather than evidence of restriction.
In other words, the body does not disappear.
The woman simply decides how she wants it framed.
That distinction is at the heart of modern body confidence.
Body Confidence Does Not Have to Look Like Body Exposure
Popular culture has frequently associated body confidence with revealing clothing.
Crop tops, bikinis, body-conscious dresses, visible skin, and traditionally sexualized silhouettes can certainly be empowering for women who genuinely enjoy wearing them.
But treating those choices as the universal visual language of confidence creates another kind of pressure.
It can quietly communicate:
If you want to prove that you love your body, show it.
Middle Eastern modest-fashion creators offer another possibility.
Confidence can appear as a woman deliberately choosing a loose silhouette.
It can appear as someone wearing a floor-length dress because she likes the movement of the fabric.
It can appear in a hijabi woman experimenting with color, texture, tailoring, jewelry, footwear, or proportions.
It can also appear in someone choosing not to participate in the cultural expectation that her body must remain visually available to an audience.
This does not mean modest dressing is automatically more empowering than revealing clothing.
That would simply replace one hierarchy with another.
The important point is choice.
A genuinely inclusive approach to body confidence must make room for both.
The body-positive conversation becomes more meaningful when confidence is not measured by the amount of skin displayed.
Leena Al Ghouti and the Normalization of Personal Style
Leena Al Ghouti’s influence is particularly relevant because her styling rarely feels like a separate “modest fashion costume.”
Her approach draws from the same international fashion vocabulary used by non-hijabi creators: oversized tailoring, athleisure, luxury accessories, monochromatic dressing, layering, and contemporary streetwear.
In a 2024 interview with Condé Nast Traveller Middle East, she explained that she does not specifically search for “modest fashion.” Instead, she takes inspiration from global fashion brands and adapts those ideas to her own style. She also described clothing as something connected to her mood and emphasized the creative possibilities of layering. (CN Traveller ME)
This is an important shift in cultural framing.
Rather than asking:
“What can a modest woman wear?”
the question becomes:
“How can any woman adapt fashion to her own boundaries?”
That is a much more expansive framework.
It allows modest women to participate in fashion without constantly having to justify their presence.
The Athlete Who Expanded the Meaning of the Hijab
If fashion changes how people see modest women, sport can change how people understand what their bodies are capable of doing.
Few examples illustrate this more powerfully than Egyptian athlete Manal Rostom.
Rostom became one of the most recognizable hijabi athletes in the global sports conversation after challenging Nike over the lack of hijabi representation in its campaigns. She subsequently became a Nike trainer and appeared in campaigns before becoming the global face of the Nike Pro Hijab. (Design Museum)
Her story is important to body confidence because the focus shifts away from the female body as an object to the body as an instrument of capability.
Running.
Climbing.
Training.
Competing.
Enduring.
Achieving.
Rostom’s public story demonstrated that the question surrounding a hijabi woman in sport should not be whether she can participate while covered. The industry itself had to reconsider whether its clothing and imagery were sufficiently inclusive.
The Nike Pro Hijab was designed with athletic performance in mind, using breathable performance material. Rostom described its development as significant because a major global sports brand was finally acknowledging hijabi athletes as part of its intended audience. (Design Museum)
The cultural consequence extends beyond one product.
When girls see women who resemble them participating in athletic spaces, representation can challenge the assumption that athleticism has a particular visual appearance.
The sporty body does not have to look one way.
The active woman does not have to dress one way.
And femininity does not have to disappear in order for physical capability to become visible.
From Being Looked At to Being Taken Seriously
The distinction between objectification and visibility is crucial.
Women have historically been caught in an impossible cultural contradiction.
They are told to look attractive, but not “too sexual.”
They are encouraged to take care of their appearance, but criticized for appearing vain.
They are expected to maintain beauty standards, yet told that appearance should not matter.
They are encouraged to be visible, while simultaneously being judged for how visible they choose to become.
Social media does not eliminate these contradictions.
Sometimes it intensifies them.
But Middle Eastern creators can disrupt one particular assumption: that female visibility requires bodily exposure.
A woman can be highly visible without making her body the primary spectacle.
She can become recognizable for her creative direction, styling, entrepreneurship, athletic achievements, humor, voice, or ideas.
This is particularly significant for younger audiences who are learning how to understand themselves through visual platforms.
The lesson becomes:
Being seen does not necessarily mean being consumed.
Mariah Idrissi and the Politics of Representation
Moroccan-British model and creator Mariah Idrissi became internationally known after appearing in H&M’s 2015 “Close the Loop” campaign, which made her one of the earliest hijab-wearing women to receive major global fashion visibility.
Her subsequent commentary has been more complicated than a simple celebration of representation.
In interviews, Idrissi has discussed both the opportunities created by mainstream fashion and the tensions between commercial fashion culture and the principles that inform her understanding of modesty.
Harper’s Bazaar Arabia documented her emphasis on self-belief, purpose, faith, and the ability of modest fashion to challenge stereotypes. (Harper’s Bazaar Arabia)
More recently, Vogue Arabia reported on her reflections about how the modest-fashion movement has evolved and how she has become more interested in work that carries deeper purpose rather than simply participating in consumption-driven fashion culture. (Vogue Arabia)
This is an important case study because representation alone is not the final goal.
A woman can be visible and still be stereotyped.
A brand can feature a hijabi model and still misunderstand the consumer.
A campaign can include modest clothing while treating modest women as a seasonal marketing opportunity.
The next stage of inclusion therefore requires more than putting a headscarf into an advertisement.
It requires listening to the women wearing it.
The Commercialization Question
The rise of modest fashion has created enormous commercial possibilities.
Brands have increasingly recognized that consumers who prefer covered silhouettes are not a tiny niche.
The global modest-fashion industry has become commercially significant, while Instagram and TikTok have accelerated the discovery of modest brands, styling techniques, and creators.
Vogue reported years ago on the growing economic importance of modest fashion, while more recent Vogue Arabia coverage has documented how modest dressing has become increasingly integrated into mainstream luxury fashion and international style culture. (Vogue)
But commercialization creates an interesting contradiction.
Can modesty remain meaningful when it becomes something that brands sell?
The answer is complicated.
Fashion has always commercialized identity.
Traditional clothing can become luxury fashion. Cultural symbols can become trends. Religious aesthetics can become marketing themes. Even ideas of rebellion eventually become products.
The problem is not necessarily that modesty enters the marketplace.
The problem arises when a lived identity is reduced to a marketing aesthetic.
This is why creators themselves are increasingly important.
They can provide context that advertising campaigns cannot.
They can explain why they dress the way they do.
They can challenge brands when products fail to meet practical needs.
And they can tell audiences when “modest fashion” feels authentic—or merely profitable.
The Gulf Is Not One Fashion Culture
Another important correction is the tendency to speak about “Middle Eastern women” as though the region has one shared cultural experience.
It does not.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and other countries have distinct histories, social structures, fashion traditions, religious interpretations, and relationships with global culture.
Even within one country, experiences vary by family, city, generation, profession, and individual belief.
The digital creator economy makes this diversity increasingly visible.
Vogue Arabia’s 2025 coverage of Arab modest-fashion figures highlighted creators from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and the wider diaspora, showing dramatically different approaches to silhouettes, color, styling, and cultural expression. (Vogue Arabia)
Saudi-based Rateel Alshehri, for example, has been profiled for combining culturally grounded silhouettes with streetwear influences.
Kuwaiti creator Fatema Al Awadhi has approached modest fashion through experimentation with prints and textures.
Emirati creator Fatma Husam has used unconventional combinations and avant-garde styling.
Leena Al Ghouti brings a minimalist, international fashion vocabulary.
These women do not represent one “Middle Eastern style.”
They represent the collapse of the idea that such a singular style exists.
The Diaspora Adds Another Layer
The cultural conversation becomes even more interesting when Middle Eastern identity travels.
Many influential modest creators exist between cultures.
They may have Middle Eastern heritage while living in Europe, North America, or elsewhere. Their wardrobes can therefore contain multiple visual languages simultaneously.
This creates a hybrid aesthetic that cannot easily be classified as either “traditional” or “Western.”
It might combine a Gulf abaya with European tailoring.
A hijab with streetwear.
Traditional embroidery with contemporary sneakers.
Luxury accessories with regional silhouettes.
Religious practice with fashion experimentation.
That hybridity is important because diaspora women are often pressured to prove where they belong.
Fashion can become one way of refusing that demand.
A woman does not have to choose between cultural authenticity and contemporary identity.
She can be both.
Rawdah Mohamed and the Right to Define the Self
The experience of Somali-Norwegian fashion figure Rawdah Mohamed further demonstrates how modesty can intersect with race, migration, belonging, and body politics.
Although she is not Middle Eastern, her influence is relevant to the broader global modest-fashion conversation because she has spoken publicly about wearing hijab from childhood and navigating hostility toward her identity after moving to Norway.
In a Vogue interview, Mohamed described the hijab becoming something she was proud of rather than something she would remove to satisfy people who were uncomfortable with her appearance. (Vogue)
Her story highlights a crucial distinction:
Confidence is not always about feeling beautiful. Sometimes it is about refusing to make yourself smaller for someone else’s comfort.
That is particularly relevant to body inclusivity.
Body confidence is frequently marketed as an internal feeling—love your body, celebrate your body, feel beautiful.
But there is another dimension: social permission.
People need environments where they can exist without constantly being asked to justify their bodies, clothes, faith, skin, size, or femininity.
The Psychological Shift: From Surveillance to Agency
There is a deeper psychological dimension to the rise of modest-fashion creators.
Women have long been taught to monitor their appearance.
Is my body too large?
Too thin?
Too exposed?
Too covered?
Too feminine?
Not feminine enough?
Does this outfit make me look bigger?
Does it show too much?
Does it hide too much?
The constant monitoring of appearance can turn clothing into a form of self-surveillance.
Modest influencers cannot—and should not be expected to—solve that problem completely.
Social media itself can intensify appearance comparison.
Yet their content can introduce another framework: clothing as agency.
Instead of dressing primarily to satisfy an imagined audience, a creator may communicate:
This is how I like to dress.
This is what feels comfortable.
This is how I express my faith.
This is how I interpret fashion.
This is what makes me feel like myself.
That psychological distinction matters.
Confidence does not necessarily mean loving every part of one’s appearance every day.
It can mean developing enough autonomy that appearance no longer dictates one’s entire sense of worth.
Why Loose Clothing Can Be Powerful
There is a misconception that loose clothing is designed to conceal insecurity.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it is simply preference.
Sometimes it is cultural.
Sometimes it is practical.
Sometimes it is fashion.
And sometimes it allows a woman to stop thinking about her body for a moment.
That last point deserves more attention.
Body positivity can unintentionally create another obligation: you must love your body.
But not every woman wants to spend her day thinking about her body.
A person can be comfortable in an oversized blazer precisely because she does not want to constantly evaluate whether her waist, hips, stomach, arms, or legs look “right.”
Modest fashion can therefore offer an alternative relationship with appearance:
The body can be present without being the project.
That is a subtle but powerful idea for body inclusivity.
Modesty Does Not Automatically Equal Confidence
Nuance is essential here.
It would be inaccurate to romanticize modesty as inherently liberating.
Women can experience pressure to cover their bodies.
They can experience judgment if they dress differently from family or community expectations.
A woman may choose modest clothing freely, while another woman may experience the same expectations differently.
The body-inclusive position cannot simply replace one rule with another.
“Women should cover themselves” is not inherently liberating.
Neither is “confident women show their bodies.”
Both become restrictive when they turn personal choice into a social requirement.
The real objective should be expanding the range of acceptable choices.
A woman should be able to cover.
A woman should be able to reveal.
A woman should be able to change her style over time.
And none of those choices should determine whether she is considered confident, moral, modern, oppressed, liberated, attractive, or worthy.
The Rise of “Modesty 3.0”
Vogue Arabia recently described contemporary modest fashion as entering an “it-girl” era, noting that modest dressing is increasingly being treated as an expression of individuality rather than a rigid set of rules. (Vogue Arabia)
That evolution can be understood as a move toward what might be called modesty 3.0.
The first stage was often about necessity or tradition.
The second stage involved proving that modest clothing could be fashionable.
The third stage is increasingly about removing the need to prove anything at all.
A woman does not have to demonstrate that her modest outfit is trendy enough.
She does not have to demonstrate that her hijab is compatible with ambition.
She does not have to prove that covered clothing can be glamorous.
It simply can be.
This normalization may ultimately be more significant than any single campaign.
From “Modest Fashion” to Fashion
One of the most promising developments is the possibility that the word “modest” itself becomes less necessary.
At present, modest fashion is often categorized separately from mainstream fashion.
There are modest collections.
Modest influencers.
Modest runways.
Modest campaigns.
Modest retailers.
This visibility has been valuable because categories can create access.
But categorization can also reinforce otherness.
Vogue Arabia’s reporting on the development of Abu Dhabi’s modest-fashion ecosystem raised precisely this issue, noting concerns that modesty could remain treated as a niche rather than being fully integrated into fashion. (Vogue Arabia)
The long-term goal may therefore be integration.
A pair of wide-leg trousers should not have to be labeled “modest” simply because a hijabi woman wears them.
A long coat should not be unusual.
A high-neck dress should not require a special religious collection.
A performance hijab should be understood as sportswear.
The more ordinary these choices become, the less cultural labor women have to perform simply to be included.
Social Media Has Changed Who Gets to Be the Expert
Traditional fashion media operated through gatekeepers.
Editors decided whose bodies were photographed.
Stylists decided whose aesthetic mattered.
Brands decided which consumers were commercially valuable.
Social platforms disrupted that system.
A creator can now build an audience by repeatedly demonstrating her own interpretation of style.
This does not eliminate gatekeeping. Algorithms introduce their own forms of visibility and exclusion.
But the power relationship has changed.
Women who were once positioned as consumers of fashion can become its interpreters.
They can identify missing products.
They can demand better sizing.
They can demonstrate how clothing works on real bodies.
They can tell brands what is impractical.
And they can make regional aesthetics globally recognizable without waiting for international institutions to validate them.
That is cultural power.
But Representation Must Become More Inclusive Within Modesty
There is also work left to do.
“Modest woman” is not synonymous with “thin woman,” “young woman,” “conventionally beautiful woman,” or “luxury-fashion woman.”
If modest fashion is genuinely going to contribute to body inclusivity, it must make room for bodies of different sizes, ages, abilities, skin tones, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
A modest outfit can still be presented through narrow beauty standards.
A woman can be fully covered and still be pressured to achieve an idealized face, body, skin, or lifestyle.
Therefore, simply increasing the number of hijabi models is not enough.
The question must become:
Which hijabi women are being represented?
And:
Which bodies are still missing?
This is where body inclusivity and modest fashion have an opportunity to meet.
The Future Is Less About Rules and More About Autonomy
The most interesting aspect of the current movement is not that Middle Eastern influencers are making modest clothing fashionable.
It is that they are making personal interpretation culturally visible.
Leena Al Ghouti demonstrates that coverage can coexist with experimentation.
Manal Rostom demonstrates that a hijab does not have to place athletic ambition outside the frame.
Mariah Idrissi demonstrates that mainstream representation can open doors while still requiring critical conversations about commercialization and purpose.
Creators across the Gulf demonstrate that modesty can be minimalist, maximalist, sporty, luxurious, traditional, experimental, colorful, monochromatic, youthful, sophisticated, or entirely personal. (Vogue Arabia)
Together, they complicate an old assumption:
That there is one correct way for a woman to look when she wants to be modest.
There isn’t.
What Body Confidence Could Look Like Next
The future of body confidence may become less visually predictable.
For decades, the fashion industry often communicated confidence through a narrow vocabulary: the right body, the right clothes, the right amount of skin, the right pose.
A more inclusive future could allow confidence to look quieter.
It might be an athlete competing in a hijab.
A woman wearing a loose suit because she loves tailoring.
A creator choosing an abaya because she feels culturally connected to it.
A woman wearing bright colors without worrying whether they “flatter” her.
A plus-size woman styling the same fashion trends as everyone else.
A woman choosing more coverage one year and different clothing the next.
The central idea is not that modesty is inherently better.
It is that women should not have to perform confidence according to someone else’s visual rules.
Conclusion: The Body Does Not Need to Be Displayed to Be Celebrated
Middle Eastern influencers are not redefining modesty by creating one new definition.
They are redefining it by demonstrating how many definitions can coexist.
That may be their most important cultural contribution.
The modern modest-fashion movement is no longer simply about making covered clothing attractive. It is about challenging the assumption that women who cover their bodies are less fashionable, less modern, less ambitious, less visible, or less confident.
At the same time, the movement offers an important lesson to body-positive culture more broadly.
Confidence should not become another dress code.
A woman does not have to reveal her body to prove she accepts it.
She does not have to hide it to prove she respects it.
She does not have to love every photograph of herself.
She does not have to fit one silhouette to deserve fashionable clothing.
And she certainly does not have to explain why she chose to cover—or why she chose not to.
The most meaningful evolution in modest fashion may therefore be happening beyond the clothes themselves.
It is happening in the relationship between visibility and autonomy.
When a woman can decide how much of herself she wants the world to see, while still participating fully in fashion, sport, work, creativity, and public life, modesty stops being interpreted solely as absence.
It becomes another language of self-definition.
And when body confidence is separated from the demand to display the body, the conversation becomes larger than fashion.
It becomes about freedom from visual obligation.
That is where Middle Eastern creators have something important to teach the wider world: a woman does not become more confident because she shows more of herself. She becomes more empowered when the choice about what to show—and what to keep for herself—actually belongs to her.
The future of body inclusivity will not be built by deciding which clothes are liberating.
It will be built by making room for women to decide that for themselves.
Sources: Vogue Arabia, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Condé Nast Traveller Middle East, The National, Euronews, Design Museum, Deutsche Welle, Soigné Middle East
