Sabirah is the luxury modest brand from fashion designer Deborah Latouche for women who wish to feel beautiful and powerful without the need to reveal.
The Sabirah brand, founded in 2020 by Deborah Latouche, celebrates modesty, through sculptural tailoring, dramatic proportion, fluid gowns and refined coverage.
Modest fashion has long since moved beyond the realms of just being about religion. Women all over the world are expressing their fashion choices through modesty. It’s a rapidly growing space within the fashion world.
Image credit: Sabirah
Modest fashion features include; rather than accentuating or hugging the curve of the body, designs embrace looser lines and more relaxed shapes. Another key aspect of modest fashion is the generous use of fabrics to enable graceful draping. Luxurious-looking fabric choices are another key element.
“Women generally inspire me, but I get inspiration from nature as well.”
The use of layering, for example, adding layers of different clothing or transition pieces over one another to create a versatile look is a beautiful art form within modest fashion. This idea of layering is particularly favourable within the colder months for fashionistas, regardless of whether they adhere to modest dressing at any other time.
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Sabirah is a brand that is centred around modesty and is at the heart of eveything they do. As a British luxury Demi-Couture house, they pride themselves on working with exceptional end-of-roll Italian and French silks, jacquards and couture fabrics.
Earlier this month, we visited the Sabirah Atelier at Somerset House during the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, in partnership with Brand63Africa. During the visit, we were able to experience first-hand, the Sabirah approach to modern modest demi-couture.
Sabirah Founder and Creative Director, Deborah Latouche, graduated originally in fashion design before moving into styling and fashion journalism. Since launching Sabirah in 2020, the brand has debuted at London Fashion Week and been invited twice to Milan Fashion Week by Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana and has been featured by Vogue Business, Vogue Arabia, Tatler, Harper’s Bazaar Italia, ELLE Italia among others.
When we asked her what she wanted women to feel at a Sabirah Atelier, she said: “I want women to come here, feel very comfortable to talk about their fashion needs and wants. We’re made to measure and made to order. Perhaps you see a particular jacket that you love, but you want it in a different fabric, we can cater to that for you.”
“The beauty of owning a Sabirah garment… they exist in deliberately limited numbers.”
The beauty of owning a Sabirah garment, in addition to the fact that they are handmade in the UK, is that they exist in deliberately limited numbers.
Latouche said: “At Sabirah, we allow the limitations of each cloth to become part of the beauty of the finished garment. Once a fabric is exhausted, that particular expression of a piece may never exist again.”
So how does she come up with the ideas for each of her creations? “Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. We’ve previously been inspired by different people. For example, American actress, singer, model Diahann Carroll as Dominique Devereux inspired our Collection 1.7.
“The collection was very Dynasty-based. She was the only Black main character in Dynasty and I thought she was completely fabulous. So, that idea inspired me. Women generally inspire me, but I get inspiration from nature as well. The colours come from what I see in nature, so I might just get excited by a colour that I come across.”
Modest fashion – a thriving industry
While, she wouldn’t be drawn on naming who her favourite celebrity to dress has been, “…Ooh, I don’t know”, she was keen to express what’s next for the brand.
“We are going to carry on doing these ateliers, we want to expand internationally as well. Although we already have many international clients, we want to have more presence internationally as well.
“The atelier is about experiencing clothes differently. There is no rush here. You can see the handwork, feel the cloth, understand why a piece exists and imagine the woman it might become part of.”
