Modest fashion is one of those categories a lot of shoppers scroll past without ever really looking. It gets filed away as “not really for me,” right up until a friend turns up to dinner in an abaya that stops the table mid-conversation, and suddenly everyone wants to know where it’s from.
The answer, more often than people expect, is luxury modest fashion brand Alkareem London, a London-based label built on more care than its price point suggests.
A brand younger than most shoppers realise
Alkareem London was started in 2020 by a founder who was just 19 at the time. Genuinely 19, not “19 and already running a family business” 19. The idea came from growing up wearing hijab and noticing how few brands were making modest pieces that felt current rather than like an afterthought bolted onto a mainstream collection. That’s the whole premise of the brand: modesty treated as a design language in its own right, not a limitation to design around.
The name carries its own story too. “Al-Kareem” comes from Islamic tradition, one of the ninety-nine names, translating to “the Most Generous,” and the brand says it built its values around that: generosity, kindness, integrity, giving back. It’s the sort of detail that could easily read as marketing copy, except it actually shows up in how the collection is put together, not just in the About page.
What stands out in the range
Most of the market looks like one style done in six colours. Alkareem London’s range has more depth than that: a hooded abaya coat that works as proper outerwear rather than something only worn indoors, florals that don’t feel like a compromise, and hand-beaded pieces where select designs reportedly take upwards of thirty hours of hand-work to finish. That’s not a claim most brands would make lightly. Thirty hours a piece is a genuinely slow way to make clothes in 2026.
The pieces are designed in London and made ethically in Dubai, with abayas priced roughly between £45.99 and £99.99, which given the hand-finishing involved is better value than the price tag might suggest.
More than an online-only label
Alkareem London has built a presence beyond its website too, appearing at Westfield London, the Muslim Shopping Festival, the World Halal Food Festival, and on Islam Channel. That’s a notable amount of visibility for a founder-led label barely five years old.
Nobody needs to become a modest fashion expert overnight to appreciate what’s happening here. It’s worth a proper look at Alkareem London’s abaya collection rather than a scroll past, because the detail holds up once you actually stop to look.
