Global fashion retailer H&M recently introduced its first ever Muslim model, dressed in a hijab, in an advertising campaign for its Fall 2015 line, and model Maria Hidrissi has won praise from her female coreligionists.
The fact that a strikingly beautiful 23-year-old just landed an H&M campaign isn’t all that surprising. What is surprising is that the model, London native Mariah Idrissi, wears a hijab. According to Fusion, earlier this year Idrissi received a call from a model scout who wanted to cast her in “Close the Loop,” a sustainable fashion campaign for H&M.
Idrissi, whose parents are Pakistani and Moroccan, is surprising the fashion world as a new model for H&M, the second largest global retailer after Zara. This month she appeared in the brand’s denim collection launch video while wearing a headscarf.
Many brands, including DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger and Mango, have launched special “Ramadan” collections in recent years, in time for the holiest month of the Islamic lunar calendar, or designed clothes with the world’s 1.6 billion Muslim consumers in mind. Most of the outfits feature long, flowing dresses in jeweled colors, skirts, long-sleeved shirts and coats.
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But Idrissi appears to be setting a precedent for diversity in fashion as one of several characters in H&M’s short film, Close the Loop, which also includes an amputee model, plus-sized models, a Gulf Sheikh and a group of Sikh men.
Muslims, the second largest religion in the world after Christianity, and according to Thomson Reuters.are projected to spend a massive $484 billion on clothing and footwear by 2019, up from $266 billion in 2013. Idrissi’s involvement in the campaign introduced H&M into a massive new market that the retailer has rarely entered in its 60 years of advertising history.
