PHOTOGRAPHY BY LANGSTON HUES/MODESTSTREETFASHION.COM

For some women, an It bag is their must-have accessory. For some observant Muslim women, the hijab is the ultimate statement maker. Not only an important part of their religious beliefs, the traditional headscarf has caught up with fashion’s latest trends, breaking its way into the mainstream with the help of social media.

If the first Instagram stars were street stylers, the latest are “hijabistas,” who use the app (in addition to others) as an outlet to show off their style, find fashion inspiration, and meet their peers around the world. Social media has become a powerful tool allowing hijabistas to show young Muslim girls that they can still be fashionable while adhering to their faith. It’s also been a key factor in showing the Western world that hey, Muslim girls like being trendy too.

U.S.-based photographer Langston Hues has profiled those with some definite hijab swagger on his blog Modest Street Fashion. Currently shooting some of the most popular hijabi bloggers for his upcoming book of the same name, he’s found that sense of style exists, regardless of the parameters.

Bloggers like the ones Hues shoots are seen as influencers, and brands are beginning to see the potential of working with them to reach a larger, and for the most part untargeted, audience of Muslim women. In turn, businesses catering to Muslim women are on the rise and using social media to do so. Look at Hijab-ista, an one stop shop for all things hijab and other wardrobe essentials.

Here, we introduce you to some of favourite hijabistas helping change the face of the modern Muslim woman:

Ascia Al-Faraj, Kuwait

If you’re looking for hijabistas making a splash in the wider fashion realm there’s Al-Faraj, a popular fashion blogger from Kuwait. She is a widely-recognized style star who is constantly being invited to exclusive viewings (such as the Isabel Marant pour H&M collection) and New York Fashion Week. Her turban-tying talent also landed her an impressive gig with Halston Heritage.

Yasmine Kanar, United States

“Yaz the Spaz” hit the YouTube scene in 2010 with her hijab-styling tutorials. Her YouTube videos have taken her from a mere vlogger to a big time social media personality with an online shop of her own and almost 50,000 followers on Instagram.

Dina Tokio, United Kingdom

The fashionable Dina Tokio is a hilarious YouTube personality that shows other hijabis how to drape their hijabs. She is also a fashion designer and owns an online shop, Lazydoll. She currently has over 59,000YouTube subscribers and some of her videos have almost 70,000 views. She also has 131,000 followers on Instagram.

Saman Munir, Canada

Closer to home we have the beautiful Saman Munir from Mississauga. She gained fame through her makeup and hijab tutorials on YouTube and now almost 200,000 likes on Facebook. She’s become somewhat of a local celebrity and partakes in several projects in the city.

Source: fashionmagazine.com

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Who better to show you the best of a hot city than the city’s finest tastemakers? To help us navigate Miami’s beauty (hard life, we know) we looked to 5 of the city’s coolest women. At the top of their game in fashion, music and beauty, they’ve certainly got their fingers on the coolness pulse. And as for style? They’ve got plenty of that too.

Laure Heriard Debreuil
CEO and founder, The Webster

French transplant Laure Heriard Debreuil is the brains (and beauty) behind the much-lauded designer den, The Webster. With a glamorous resume including stints at Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, where she worked hand in hand with former creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, Debreuil ditched Paris in favour of the sun and sand of Miami Beach to launch her store five years ago.

As a definitive Miami It girl (she’s even got her own closet spot on The Coveteur), we quizzed Debreuil on the ins and outs of the city’s spots and style:

Why did you pick Miami for The Webster?

For the sunshine and beautiful beaches all year long, the unique architecture and extremely rich cultural melting-pot. Art Basel brought Miami back on the art map but there was a lack of fashion to match, especially given that it’s the gate to Latin and South America.

What is your favourite Miami bar hangout? 
The second floor of the Soho Beach House.

What are your favourite restaurants in Miami?

I have many. I like Tap Tap for a one-of-a-kind Haitian experience, Mandolin for a more Mediterranean vibe, Lido Restaurant and The Standard restaurant for an amazing set and view on the water, Casa Tua for a very romantic dinner, The Setai for unique Asian mix delicious food and Cecconi’s for divine Italian.

Where do you shop in Miami if not the Webster?
C Madeleine’s is a unique haven for vintage pieces!

Are there any upcoming projects we should look out for at The Webster?
Art Basel will be full of surprises and definitely worth the trip. I always do some exclusive collaborations with the designers I carry and the Fall/Winter collections will be very exciting!

Lorraine Sangre
DJ, “No Name” founder

We discovered Lorraine Sangre’s steez on Refinery29 last year and have been pleasantly surprised by her talents ever since. DJ, party planner and recent director of marketing for Miami hotspot Electric Pickle, she’s an It girl blend of house, techno, pastels and punky pinup style. And hey, she’s also a photographer.

What do you like best about DJing?

It’s a great feeling to have people vibe off what you’re playing when you’re sharing music and experience that you so dearly love. Introducing to them things that are new or even just the mutual appreciation is phenomenal. Whether I am playing music to myself alone in my room or to a few or out in a crowd, I’m going to get lost in the music so maybe sometimes other people are there as well.

What do you like best about Miami?

The sunsets are undeniable and despite my extreme aversion to the sun and heat, I love the beach and being in the ocean (preferably after 4 or 5pm). I appreciate the abundant spiritual undercurrent that exists here- it’s quite special.

When you’re not DJing, where are you hanging in Miami
More recently there’s less hanging out and more hermitting in to work on some new projects, but if I could spend a lot more time/live at any two public places in Miami it’d be Fairchild Tropical Gardens for some nature/beauty and the Standard Spa for priceless recharging & relaxation.

What is your favourite restaurant in Miami?

Lemoni Cafe is essential, a staple that one could easily frequent multiple times weekly (as I have been known to do). Lo De Lea is a great little spot for Argentine steak.
Last but not least, I must mention understated Miami treasure that is Chef Creole in Little Haiti.

What is your favourite bar hangout?

For swank and divine cocktails The Regent at The Gale Hotel is impeccable. On the other side of things: Magnum, a gay piano bar, in the main building with a “shack” out back that serves up $4 margaritas. There’s also the infamous dive bar called The Deuce on South Beach, which kind of goes without saying.

Where do you shop in Miami?

I do a lot of shopping outside of Miami but it is definitely great for thrifting and vintage finds. In terms of local vendors, Nic Fit Vintage in particular has some amazing things and can be found participating in all kinds of pop up shop events around Miami. On the street wear front, So It Seems and Stray Rats are two very cool homegrown brands that Miami has to boast about.

The Gee family (left to right: Celene Stephanie, Miriam and Natalie)
Owners, GEE Beauty

Toronto beauty fanatics may already be familiar with the amazingness that is GEE Beauty. The Yorkville-based beauty boutique caters to high-end brands like Tata Harper, Rodial and Oribe and even boasts its own in-house makeup label. The store, which is the brainchild of the Miami-obsessed mother (Miriam) and three sisters (Celene, Stephanie and Natalie), opened its Bal Harbour outpost in 2011.

When you’re not working, where are you hanging out in Miami?

When we’re not working, we’re either hanging out at Soho Beach House (they curate amazing events and have a gorgeous pool and beach), or we’re down on Purdy Avenue/Sunset Harbour doing classes at Flywheel and Flybarre or grabbing a fresh-press juice or smoothie at Jugofresh, an amazing juice/smoothie/raw-food spot that has a very cool local vibe. -Natalie Gee

What do you love about being located in Bal Harbour Shops?

Their collection of the most world-renowned brands is really what makes Bal Harbour Shops so unique, set in such a lush, beautiful environment. It’s really a lifestyle destination. You can spend the afternoon at The Shops,  eating lunch, having a beauty treatment, shopping, having a cappuccino.

It’s an amazing location for us because it’s given us the opportunity to introduce Gee Beauty to Miami in the best possible way, to both the wide variety of locals and international travelers. With the thousands of visitors that come to The Shops each year, combined with the cultural events Bal Harbour involves us with, we’ve been able to be exposed to such unique experiences and cultivate such incredible clients. -Natalie Gee

What’s your favourite thing about the Shops?

We’d have to say it’s the glamour. The people, the shops themselves, the style, the South American flair. Being in Miami and at The Shops has definitely inspired our own personal styles. We tend to wear more colour and prints when we’re here. –Celene Gee

What is your favourite bar hangout?

The Freehand Miami has a very cool, low-key bar called The Broken Shaker that makes amazing drinks, Bardot is awesome for live music, and Rec Room for late night dancing. -Natalie Gee

Sari Azout
Co-Founder, Bib + Tuck

Shopping without spending. Pardonne moi? Welcome to the fantasy land of Bib + Tuck, the online marketplace for style setters to trade designer and vintage clothing. Genius like that could only be launched by It girls, which is exactly what co-founders Sari Azout and Sari Biblowizc are. The two Saris split time between New York and Miami, so naturally, we quizzed Sari A aka. Azout on her favourite hotspots around the city.

What’s your favourite place to shop in Miami?
The Webster and C Madeleine’s.

Does your style change when you’re in Miami? 

Although my style is definitely more New York, Miami girls have crazy, sexy, cool style. They find a way to make the heat work to their advantage and sport a mini skirt like no other. When I’m in Miami, I fully embrace the beach to street look. I’m usually wearing something that screams look-at-me – crochet pants, white dresses with high gladiator sandals, white lace overalls, turbans, rompers in vibrant colors, cut-out anything.

What’s your favourite hidden nook in Miami? 
The Corner

Bonnie Beats
DJ/Producer and show host of SLO on Klangbox FM

Within the vibrant and popping DJ scene in Miami, Bonnie Beats emerges as a definite It girl. Known for her TK feel good sounds, her tomboy style and her epic mixes for Art Basel and on Virgin Radio, the New York raised DJ is one of our new favourites. Her connection to fashion is also about to get even tighter: she’s about to open Miami’s first alt and neo-goth boutique, FORMVL Clothing Gallery.

What do you like best about Miami?
The night really spoils you with a good time. Wild late nights, skinny dipping on the beach, you really can’t find in any other city.

What is your favourite restaurant in Miami?
I’m going to rep Gigi on this one. Even though they keep a few local favourites, their menu’s always changing adding killer flavours to their carte du jour. Plus, their buns are out of hand.

What is your favourite bar hangout?
No doubt it would be Wood. It’s definitely become the spot to hit up before a good show or wild night out.

How would you describe Miami style?
What I wear is not the norm but I would say for most people in the city it’s anything short, thin, lace-y or light. It gets mad hot down here. So less is more in this case.

Source: fashionmagazine.com

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Now in its 12th year, Art Basel Miami is regarded as the biggest art event in North America. Beyond attracting star couples like Jay Z and Beyoncé, the 250-plus international galleries participating bring more than 50,000 art lovers to Miami. To help navigate this gigantic affair, which runs from Dec. 5 to 8, we’ve highlighted key names from Canada’s art scene who will be in attendance, and asked them about past memories and future itineraries.

Hugh Scott-Douglas
Artist

Ottawa’s Hugh Scott-Douglas is looking forward to heading to Art Basel Miami this year with his fashion designer wife, Lara Vincent. The duo will be hanging at nightspots like Le Baron and David Lynch’s Silencio by night and frequenting theJessica Silverman, Blum & Poe and De La Cruz spaces by day (all of which will have pieces by the 25-year-old on display). “NADA at Art Basel Miami 2011 was the start of my career, because it gave my work the opportunity to be seen by larger galleries and collectors,” he says. “I stepped up from being an emerging artist to being an internationally recognized emerging artist.” His collectors include the Dallas Museum of Art, Takashi Murakami and François Pinault. Scott-Douglas’s latest work took inspiration from the notion of how we can imagine a building from a blueprint or a film from its poster or trailer. “For me, it becomes about how to find a material or process that can reflect or highlight some of this content or echo its history.” —Alexandra Breen

Julia Dault
Artist

“I was making work as a closeted artist,” laughs Julia Dault, 35, referring to her past life as an art critic for the National Post. “You can only put off what you’ve wanted to do your whole life for so long.” So in 2006, the painter/sculptor packed her bags for an MFA program at Parsons. Now, she’s included in the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Guggenheim Museum collections. An art fair regular (she shows with Jessica Bradley and International Art Objects), the Toronto native says she was “stopped dead in her tracks” by an Ellsworth Kelly painting in the Matthew Marks Gallery at last year’s fair. This year, she’s been commissioned to do a sculpture for the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Pérez Art Museum Miami. Adding to her buzz is the fact that her sculptures are constructed entirely on-site. Fashion lovers are equally worked up by the news of her upcoming collaboration with Jeremy Laing on his S/S 2014 collection. —A.B.

Judith Tatar
Consultant/Curator

In 2002, Toronto’s Judith Tatar attended her first Art Basel Miami. She packed a couple of outfits, but had few expectations. Eleven years later—having done the global art fair circuit and opened Tatar Art Projects, which advises clients like the Conrad Hotel in New York—things have changed. Tatar now plans her visit to South Beach months in advance. “From an anthropological point of view, watching that much wealth and glamour mixing together is a fun experience,” she says. “Seeing Emily Blunt and Calvin Klein is fascinating. It’s like celebrity porn.” This year, Tatar has her eye on Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, the son of Carine Roitfield, who has opened a New York gallery: “He’s becoming quite the scion in the art
establishment.”—Elio Iannacci

Daniel Faria and Rui Amaral
Gallery owner and curator

If Gen Y thinks of Douglas Coupland first and foremost as an artist, it’s largely thanks to Daniel Faria. In 2012, the Torontonian curated 100 “canvases” by the Vancouver icon, and last summer he nurtured their relationship with a show of Coupland’s new pixellated works. Faria and his partner, Rui Amaral, who also works with the Toronto gallery Scrap Metal, are both international art fair fixtures, spending months on the schmooze. In December, the duo will return to Art Basel Miami. “In New York or London, you get sucked up in the big city,” says Faria, “but in Miami you’re inevitably running into art people [and] having conversations about art.” As a result, younger, concurrent fairs like the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) have taken hold. “Miami has turned itself around in the last 10 years,” says Amaral. “Basel has been one of the strongest pioneers of that shift.” —Ellen Himelfarb

Dr. Diane Vachon
Museum Board Director

For Dr. Diane Vachon, art collector, board member and acquisition committee member at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec and theMusée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the attraction to Basel lies beyond the sheer beauty of the art. “Artists are like the people at the front of the ship, keeping vigil over society,” she says. “They show us the way.” Which is why each year, Vachon makes her way south to hunt for talent at the event’s offshoot fairs—NADA and Pulse—which focus on emerging talent. As for Art Basel Miami proper, she has a tip for newbies: “I go to the main fair three or four times during my stay, just so it can sink in.” In 2012, Vachon brought home a large drawing by Berlin-based artist Jorinde Voigt, whose sudden popularity has since risen to international levels, giving Vachon Basel gold. —Abi Slone

Laing and Kathleen Brown
Art Consultants

“Basel has become such a big part of our lives,” says Kathleen Brown of Brown Art Consulting, a company she founded in Vancouver with her husband, Laing. “We’ve been collecting for 30-some years for other people, and we’ve attended Basel Miami since 2007.” Works from artists like Ai Weiwei and Jenny Holzer—who’s known for making LED pieces with politically charged phrases—are among the Browns’ Basel triumphs. “Jenny’s a blue-chip artist,” says Laing, adding that appreciation of Holzer’s work has gone up considerably since they secured her art in Miami. “She was just written about in The New York Times.” Naomi Campbell and Will Smith are among the Browns’ celebrity encounters at the fair. “We think we can attract and retain good clients based on our knowledge of international art and the market,” Kathleen says. —E.I.

Kitty Scott
AGO Curator

As a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Kitty Scottsays she heads to Art Basel Miami because it’s “a great chance to see work from around the world and private collections in a really concentrated way.” The Newfoundlander’s career has included gigs as a visiting professor at several high-profile universities and colleges. This year, Scott is hoping to become acquainted with more artists from Central and South America at the Cisneros Collection. When she’s not art-hopping, Scott will likely be spotted chatting with colleagues about art at Garcia’s Seafood Grille & Fish Market. Emerging Canadian talents like Duane Linklater, Annie MacDonell and Mark Clintberg (who tops her “artists to watch” list) may creep into her conversations too. —A.B.

Sarah Anne Johnson
Artist

In 2007, Winnipeg artist Sarah Anne Johnson’s entire first show at the Julie Saul Gallery was scooped up by the Guggenheim Museum. “It exceeded any hopes and dreams I had for myself. In one month, everything changed,” explains the 37-year-old Yale grad and teacher. The National Gallery bought most of her second show, and the third was purchased by collector Michael Nesbitt and donated to the Art Gallery of Ontario. This year, Johnson’s Basel presence will be felt at the Julie Saul Gallery with new pieces about intimacy. Heading into the bedrooms of her friends to capture “intimate moments,” Johnson says, “These surrogate bodies [served] as blank canvases to paint over with hopes, insecurities and desires for romance.” When it comes to her own art collection, she says, “I’d consider re-mortgaging my house to buy one of Shary Boyle’s porcelains.” —A.B.

Karel Funk
Artist

Before his paintings were mounted in the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Canada, Karel Funkwas an aspiring pro skateboarder turned University of Manitoba grad/artist working as a part-time janitor. An MFA from Columbia University gave him “one more push conceptually and technically,” and led to a 2004 show at 303 Gallery, which The New York Times praised as breathing “new life into the seemingly exhausted genre of photo realism.” Based in Winnipeg, Funk, 42, is looking forward to showing the world what he’s been up to at Art Basel Miami. “I’ve got some figurative work that I’m doing right now—portraits of people who are turned away from the viewer, with most of their flesh covered by deep shadow.” The hyperrealist painter cites the Metropolitan Museum of Art and painters like Albrecht Dürer as top inspirations. —A.B.

Paddy Johnson
Blogger

Critic Paddy Johnson, a 38- year-old Guelph, Ont., native, is an art fair sibyl of sorts. The art-meets-digi maven behind New York’s beloved art blog Artfcity.com(voted best blog by The Times online) posts daily Basel updates that have the industry talking. Her street cred is about to be upped, as Art F City has teamed up with Tumblr to sell the first Tumblr art piece at NADA. It will feature 40 artists, including Toronto-based Lorna Mills, and the entire thing—the size of a football field—will be printed out and rolled onto a wheel. Other activities that have this blog queen pumped are the Untitled fair, the W Hotel parties and NADA’s pool scene. At night, though, she’s curled up with takeout at the Marriott.—A.B.

Jeanie Riddle
gallery director/curator

Jeanie Riddle, director and curator at Montreal gallery Parisian Laundry, is no fool when it comes to counting the benefits of Art Basel Miami. Beyond the art, there is the pleasure of heading south from a Montreal winter. “It’s warm, sunny and glamorous,” she says. “People are excited and ready to feel blown away by work—hopefully enough to take it home.” Networking, parties, sunshine and rubbing elbows with art stars aren’t the only things that make the trek worthwhile. “Our experience at the NADA fair with [Montreal artist] Valérie Blass garnered exceptional exposure,” she says. “This was also the case at the inaugural Untitled fair, hosted right on the beach! Nothing compares to people walking into the fair, damp from a swim and ready to talk art.” This year, Parisian Laundry will show the work of David Armstrong Six, Janet Werner and Jaime Angelopoulos. —A.S.

Source: fashionmagazine.com

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