Muslim model brings modesty to the catwalk
MILAN Fashion Week has never been known for its progressive attitude to diversity, nor are American beauty pageants often a means to a high fashion end – but an air of change seems to have hit the Italian capital.
Even with the double threat appearance of both Hadid (Gigi and Bella) sisters in Wednesday’s Alberta Ferretti show and yesterday’s Max Mara offering, a 19-year-old beauty queen entrant stole the limelight. Halima Aden, a Muslim Somali-American born in a Kenyan refugee camp, was cast wearing modest outfits and co-ordinating hijab. She was spotted last November by the stylist Carine Roitfeld (the former editor of French Vogue) after her burkini-sporting entrance in the Miss Minnesota pageant.
Aden told the Telegraph: “I have strict wardrobe requirements based on my religious and cultural upbringing. I grew up never seeing women who looked like me in magazines or on TV and didn’t feel that I had a place in the world of fashion.” Whether she is a tokenistic inclusion is perhaps a moot point: the fashion world has long courted the Muslim-majority Arab market.
With an eye on the rigour of Scandinavian functional minimalism, the collection at Max Mara held true to the classic codes of the house: beautiful, grown-up, luxury clothes. Looks were in head-to-toe colours – a sumptuous red, chocolate browns, greys from soft to dark, black and, of course, camel (Aden sported the house icon – a camel hair wrap coat).
Equally at Fendi – featuring British-Ghanaian model du jour Adwoa Aboah – there was a mature attitude, a move on from the house’s recent foray into whimsy and goggly-eyed fur ball cartoon charms. Artistic director Karl Lagerfeld took inspiration from Roman femmes fatales: a Prince of Wales checked jacket worn with a teal pleated midi and blue flora-printed silk midi dress were paired with fire engine red over-the-knee boots which gave the demure mood a kinky punch.
The closing cinematic sentiment of the day went to Miuccia Prada – a house currently under financial strain.
Her proposition delivered some much-needed verve. The collection was a youth quake of Pradain provocation, fusing Americana thrift – brown corduroy trouser suits, sheepskin covered moccasins – with noir glamour: slinky black maxi skirts slit up the front, beaded cocktail dresses and emerald satin court shoes clouded in gold baubles.