Faith Fashion Fusion

Hijab House fashion shoot: Edem Dokli, Anastasia Zhelobovskaya, Giarne Wedes

Over the past year staff at the Museum have been developing content for the exhibition Faith, Fashion, Fusion: Muslim women’s style in Australia opening in May this year. From streetstyle to red carpet dresses, the exhibition will explore the emerging modest fashion market and the work of a new generation of Australian clothing brands offering stylish clothing for Muslim and non-Muslim women.

Through filmed interviews and photo shoots we have been capturing the stories and creative process behind some of these fashion labels. Our first photography session documented Hijab House’ fashion shoot for its mid summer 2010 campaign. Established in 2010 by Tarik Houchar Hijab House was the first Australian Muslim women’s fashion retailer to open inside a mainstream shopping centre and it was their striking marketing images that made the store stand out in the busy mall environment. Tarik commented that initially he would

see a lot of non-Muslim shoppers walk past and look up and seem amazed at that kind of product being offered in a suburban mall. It was challenging at first, but people are now very accepting of it. They love the concept and they love the accessibility of our brand.

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Tarik conceived the ‘You’re late for Tea’ collection as pretty and playful and themed his shoot around the tea party in Alice in Wonderland noting the theme

is very culturally relevant because obviously Muslim women can’t drink things like alcohol, so tea and social engagements are very important for our culture.

This image shows models Edem Dokli, Anastasia Zhelobovskaya and Giarne Wedes posed as if about to take tea – all that is missing is the tea set. Tarik was inspired by the work of Swedish illustrator Lovisa Burfitt so in post production had the photographs overlaid with text and the accoutrements of a tea party. The final image appeared on Hijab House’ Facebook page and as a huge graphic in the window of Hijab House at Bankstown Centro, Sydney.

Tags: faith, fashion, Muslim, retail, shopping, Sydney, women

The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day blog features a new image each day, chosen from the Powerhouse Photo Library.

The majority of these images have been taken by Museum photographers for a variety of purposes such as for exhibitions, of objects in our collection, events, behind-the-scenes and location shots. We also feature many images taken by our Flickr community and from our visitors. We hope you enjoy the photographs and stories.

The licensing of each image varies however we are trying to release as many as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 license.