A Modest Brand Founder Talks Business, Personal Style & More

My mother was very into fashion when I was growing up. We spent a lot of time in Selfridges when I was a child! It’s interesting because a couple of seasons ago, one of my muses for Sabirah was Dominique Deveraux from Dynasty and, after talking to my mum, she said she was always a style influence for her too – a powerful Black woman who was always impeccably dressed. One of my earliest, I suppose fashion, memories is that I could always hear my mum approaching. Click-clack, click-clack – she always wore heels, so you always knew she was coming! 

I didn’t think about a career in fashion until I was in India on a gap year. I just fell in love with the colours and the fabrics, and I started doing really bad drawings and taking them to the tailor to get things made. While I was there, I said to my friends, “I want to go back and be a fashion designer.” But I had a place at university, so when I told my parents I wasn’t going to take it, they told me it was a terrible choice! Regardless, I went back to secondary school to do my A Levels and then I joined the London College of Fashion’s foundation course before doing my degree. After that, I was invited to go to Fabrica in Italy for a year. I started out designing furniture – it was very cross-disciplinary, which really opened my mind to all sorts of creativity. 

After Fabrica, I moved to Milan for three years. I did many different things there: I assisted the menswear designer Carol Christian Poell – he was like the Margiela of Milan – then I did some print design work in Como. I also started working at Italian Elle – they would commission me to do illustrations for their pages – and I also started styling. In many ways, it was the most creative period of my career.

My own sense of style has evolved over the years. I became a Muslim 17 years ago, so my style was very different to when I was a young London clubber. Fashion has been important to me since my early 20s, so it was about translating this new aesthetic into something that still felt high fashion and really well made. That’s probably where Sabirah was first born because it was a frustration of mine – I wanted pieces that were well cut, well made and met my modest requirements.

I’ve always done my own thing. I’ve never really followed people or trends. A friend of mine once said to me: “I don’t know anybody, Deborah, who could wear head-to-toe yellow and still look good.”  But that was me. These days I wear a lot more black but I still love colour. That’s another thing that makes Sabirah what it is – we spend a long time on each individual pattern, as well as the colours and cut. We often tweak the cuts because we work with end-of-life fabrics too.