Italian luxury fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana recently launched its very first collection of hijabs and abayas targeting Muslim shoppers in the Middle East.
"The new Dolce & Gabbana Abaya collection is a reverie amidst the desert dunes and skies of the Middle East: an enchanting visual story about the grace and beauty of the marvelous women of Arabia," the brand said.
Forbes termed D&Gs launch of the Abaya Collection the "smartest move" made by the brand in years. It described the line thus:
"D&G’s new line manages to be both respectful of their Middle Eastern shoppers’ needs while staying true to their spirited, Sicily-inspired aesthetic: think lush lace embellishments, bright floral details and even a vibrant lemon print.
According to CNN, the collection is available at the brand's boutiques in the Middle East along with select stores in Paris, London, Milan and Munich.
And it is not only D&G, but several other high-fashion brands that are targeting the "lucrative Muslim market", the report states.
A Thomson Reuters report stated that Muslim shoppers spent $266 billion on clothing and footwear in 2013 globally- more than the total fashion spending of Japan and Italy together- and that this figure is likely to rise to $488 billion by 2019.
In a piece for The Atlantic, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell calls the pieces in the collection "so gorgeously crafted that they could easily appeal to nonbelievers". Adding a bit of history, she writes,
"Of course, Muslim women have been wearing high-end designer labels, Dolce & Gabbana included, for years. Indeed, the fashion industry would very likely collapse without their patronage. In his 1989 book The Fashion Conspiracy, the journalist Nicholas Coleridge noted the impact of the Middle Eastern oil boom on French haute couture beginning in the mid-1970s, when it was struggling to remain culturally relevant and financially viable. "The least successful houses, up to their ears in debt, saw the Arabs as cash cows and milked them mercilessly," Coleridge wrote. "Capitalizing on their taste for expensive beading, dresses were beaded from neck to ankle, with beads applied where beads had rarely been seen before: beaded gloves, beaded mobcaps, beaded stockings, beaded clothes-covers in which to transport beaded balldresses."