Sometime in the last fifteen years, fashion brands found a new way to sell clothes. They told women that the clothes would make them more powerful.
It worked. It still works. The word empowerment is everywhere now. It shows up on brand websites, in ad campaigns, and in the way companies describe what they do for their customers. Modest fashion has used it too, maybe more than most.
It is easy to see why. For a long time, people said that dressing modestly held women back. They said it limited women and left no room for self-expression. Empowerment language was an answer to that. We are not holding you back, the brands said. We are setting you free. We are empowering you.
But look closely at the word and something feels off. It suggests that the woman buying the garment had no power before, and that the brand is handing it to her. In this view, the garment is a tool that changes her. Buy this, and become more.
A woman who has dressed modestly for ten years does not feel it that way. Her abaya does not empower her. It covers what she wants covered. It works through the different parts of her day. It looks the way she wants to look. The garment is doing a job. That is what clothes are for.
The other option is plain, specific language. It tells you what the garment is made of. It tells you how it is cut. It tells you how it will feel when you wear it to work, then to a family dinner, then to Friday prayers. These are claims you can check. You can test them, and if they are wrong, you can say so. A brand that makes specific claims has to stand behind them. A brand that sells empowerment never has to.
Empowerment is a feeling, not a claim. You cannot return a garment because it did not make you feel powerful. You can return it because the sleeve pulls when you raise your arm.
A woman who has bought modest fashion for years has learned to look past this kind of language. She looks for the details. She wants to know what the sleeve does, not what the garment will do to how she sees herself. These are two different questions. Only one of them has an answer.
This piece was produced with AI writing assistance and is editorially reviewed by the Aeshal team.
