When Nihal Al Qawasmi heard her local Lucille Roberts gym was closing, the 21-year-old Muslim woman was crestfallen. The all-female space was a safe haven for the Yonkers resident, who avoids form-fitting clothing and covers everything but her hands and face when she’s around men.
“At Lucille, I could wear anything, like a tank top and shorts, and not care,” says the co-founder of MissMuslim, a blog covering Muslim culture.
She’s part of the boom of observant Muslim and Jewish women who want to hit the gym but, in order to cover themselves while working out, struggle with makeshift layered ensembles that are as bulky as they are unflattering. But now, companies are beginning to wake up to their needs, and it comes on the heels of apparel and footwear sales jumping 42 percent — to $270 billion — from 2008 to 2015, according to a 2015 Morgan Stanley report.
One such startup, Veil Garments, designs “modest sportswear” for the Muslim crowd. Its 21-year-old founder, Ahmad Ghanem, says women would tell him their only options were to work out in the privacy of their own homes or to throw on a long sweater in a mixed gym setting.
“They’d get too hot and not be able to move around,” says Ghanem, who has taken 400 preorders following a $40,000 Kickstarter campaign.
The two styles — the Spark Half-Zip, a top that falls at the thigh, and the Halo Running Hoodie, a two-in-one long top with a scuba hood that acts as a built-in hijab — cost between $55 and $60.
“It covers my tush, which is good,” says Al Qawasmi. “It feels breezy and cool.”
Like Muslim women, most modern Orthodox Jewish women who work out in the company of men have to conceal most exposed skin. Tops typically cover three-fourths of the forearm; skirts should, at minimum, hit the knee. Such mandates often lead to cumbersome layering and multiple waistbands that foil workouts.
That’s what led Candice Safdieh, 28, an Orthodox mom of three from Flatbush, Brooklyn, to create Snoga Athletics 14 months ago. (“Snoga” is a portmanteau, combining “siniut,” which means “modest” in Hebrew, and “yoga.”)
“When it came time to work out, I’d have mismatched leggings with a skirt,” says Safdieh, who co-founded the line with her mother. “The two waistbands were uncomfortable, and I never looked put-together.”
And so her skirt-legging combo was born. Among the seven options are faux-wrap and pencil skirts ($56 to $64), offered at two different lengths, along with an attached cropped or full-length legging. Snoga sales spiked fivefold over the past year, and the online shop will launch workout tops in the fall.
Fan Karen Serouya says the gear is helpful when riding a bike.
“The skirt does whatever you need it to,” says the 40-year-old fitness buff. “There’s no constriction.”
And the best part? Blending in with the Lululemon crowd.
“You look no different than a girl in her leggings and a tank top,” says Serouya, a stay-at-home mom of five from Deal, NJ. “You look just as polished.”