Global retailers look to cash-in on Muslim fashion

Global Business

Over the past two years, companies like Mango, Tommy Hilfiger and DKNY, have all come out with special Ramadan collections.

CCTV America’s Roza Kazan reported on this niche market, projected to reach $327 billion by 2020.
Follow Roza Kazan on Twitter @rozakazancctv

“I was trying to start a career in TV and people kept telling me ‘No, not until you take your scarf off. You cannot be on television,’ and I thought, well, I’m just going to make my own thing,” Mariam Sobh, a Muslim Fashion Blogger said.

That was 10 years-ago. Sobh now anchors on a local radio station and her blog gets over 2.5 million hits a month. She believes there is a reflection of the growing buying power of Muslims, which fashion companies are now trying to catch up.

Sobh said the companies now realize how much money there is in this market. In the U.S. the Muslim consumer market is worth $170 billion.

According to Pew Research, in the coming decades, the Muslim population is expected to grow twice as fast as the global population (73 percent vs 35 percent). At current rates, by 2050, nearly one in three people on earth will be Muslim.

Global retailers look to cashin on Muslim fashion 1

But for Melanie Elturk, a Fashion Designer, it’s more than just a business.

“What really did it for me was knowing that I could have an impact on our community and help girls who wear hijab to feel more comfortable, self-confident, beautiful, not to see it as something as barrier,” Elturk said.

For decades, young Muslim women in the United States had to come to special stores to buy modest clothing.

Now most of them refer to it as traditional or “cultural” clothing, which they buy only for special occasions like weddings and parties.