From Fusion
by Alaa Basatneh
ORLANDO, Florida—It wasn’t a typical weekend scene at the Fashion Square Mall in central Florida. A DJ blasted loud belly dance music as fashionably dressed Muslim women in hijabs took red carpet selfies and got free makeovers to celebrate the grand opening of Verona, the first Islamic fashion store to open in a major U.S. shopping mall.
Verona has only been open for a couple of days, but it’s already challenging Islamaphobia towards Muslim women who wear headcovers in western society.
“We have this stereotype that hijabis [women who wear the hijab] are oppressed, that they’re forced to wear it, and they’re uneducated. These things are everything that I am not and everything that my customers are not,” store owner Lisa Vogl told Fusion as she and her business partners cut the ribbon on the store.
Vogl is an American designer and fashion photographer who converted to Islam in 2011 and started her own modest clothing and hijab brand in 2013. “From a young age I would design things with my grandma, and she would sew them for me,” said Vogl, who’s in her early thirties.
As a full-time fashion photographer, Vogl travelled around the Arab world and the United States working on projects featuring Islamic clothing brands. But traveling became a challenge after she had her first kid, so she shifted gears and started her own fashion brand, Verona Collection. “I decided to open up a fashion brand because it’s something I can be at one spot and do. It was just easier as a mom,” she says.
