As any Muslim woman can and probably will tell you, buying clothes in Australia if you are a Muslim woman is quite difficult. We don't have a thriving Muslim fashion market in my city and the handful of shops selling Muslim clothing lines are either in one style or heavily marked up. I don't want to pay in the hundreds for an abaya.
When you mention it to people you are often met with responses suggesting you wait for the western clothing lines to put out a maxi dress or you should purchase when you travel overseas. What they don't understand is many of us are not born overseas and don't regularly travel overseas to Muslim majority nations.
What we are left to do is a bit of online shopping that involves a lottery pick in the size, fit and quality stakes. Deprived are we of the ability to go out and sort through the myriad of dresses, trying on and asking a million times if we look good in this. We miss out on the thrill and our husbands, fathers, brothers, don't have any idea how disappointed we are.
If you have a husband like mine who is appearance concerned and spends a whole day in the shopping malls trying to stock his wardrobe then you would understand my frustration dragged along on his quests. I get to the mall and walk out often empty handed. He walks out with four to five bags. He often asks why I never purchased anything and I'm dumbstruck. Do men not realise that between the short shorts and skinny jeans, there isn't a vast supply of suitable Muslimah clothing? That when we look at handbags and they worry we have an obsession, it's really just because we have nothing else to look at? Unless we are stocking our wardrobe with around the house clothing items we really have little to do with the mall and that disappoints me as it brought me so much fun when I was younger.
Alas, not all is lost. I have managed to become an excellent online shopper and built a small list of great Aussie brands that ship to where I live. Not exactly the same but it's something.
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