SUMAYYAH NASARUDDIN – RELIGIOUS TEACHER AND INTER-STATE MUSLIMAH DESIGNER

      Aberdeen, Scotland, 22 Sha’ban 1434/1 July 2013 (MINA) – SUMAYYAH Nasaruddin currently lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, where she teaches religious classes on weekends. The 31-year-old flies home to Kuala Lumpur often enough, but this time, she is back to launch her own clothing brand called Love To Dress.

     Designed in Scotland, manufactured in China and to be marketed in Malaysia and Australia next month, Love To Dress marks Sumayyah’s official entry into the Muslim fashion market, an emerging industry in which the young designer believes she has found her niche, the MuslimVillage.com quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting, Monday.

      A law graduate who worked as a merchant banker, Sumayyah says her journey into the fashion world was unplanned, but hardly surprising either. However, she never expected that out of many genres and styles available, she would end up championing Muslim fashion.

      “When I was young, I used to follow my grandmother to shop for clothes in Jalan Masjid India. So I’ve always been interested in clothes, fashion and designing. I was always drawing. However, I later did law in UK to follow in my late father’s footsteps. I even went to the same law school as he did. Upon graduation, I helped him with his banking business in Indonesia and Malaysia,” says Sumayyah.

How it started

      A month after she got married in 2007, her father succumbed to cancer. Five months later, her brother died in a hit-and-run accident. He was 24.

    “I was devastated. I began to rethink life and death. I decided that I had to stop being depressed and find my purpose in life,” she says.

     Sumayyah then joined the Young Muslim Project, where she made friends and new connections. Amid the soul-searching, an opportunity to further her studies in Scotland popped up.

     “When the offer for a scholarship in Islamic Studies came by, I decided to just do it. My husband fully supported my decision and even quit his job to seek employment in Scotland. My family supported my decision too,” she recalls.

      Her studies eventually led her to conduct research on Islam and fashion.

      “As I worked on my thesis about Muslim fashion in Malaysia, I began to follow the blogosphere and research on that trend. I found out that there was a real demand for Muslim fashion, especially in Western countries. I researched deeper and found out that Muslim consumers in Indonesia and Malaysia are actually trendsetters,” says Sumayyah.

Getting her groove

      Through her research, Sumayyah also identified an entrance for her designs.

      “There are a lot of Muslim clothes with traditional cuttings, so I wanted to offer pieces that not only cover the aurat (modesty) with beautiful, easy to care and comfy material, but most importantly offer modern cuts too,” Sumayyah says.

     “Come to think of it, it is just dresses with long sleeves, hardly rocket science, but the market lacks such choices. I hope my dresses will be easily adopted by those looking for an alternative to the likes of baju kurung, jubah and abaya,” says Sumayyah, who prefers to sketch her design using pen on paper before transferring it to her computer.

      With a startup investment of RM 60,000, Sumayyah chose to make her dresses in China, which is cheaper compared with Malaysia.

     “Like a lot of startups, I hesitated initially before venturing into the Chinese manufacturing market. Thankfully, through Alibaba.com, I managed to secure manufacturers who could handle my requests professionally and efficiently. We communicated via email and Skype. The reps spoke good English and whenever there were hiccups, we managed to iron things out. I also valued their feedback — they said they liked the pattern, cut and material that I’d come up with, so that gave me positive vibes,” she says.

       Sumayyah have more designs but for a start, she offering three dress series called Vintage Jannah, Royal Iman and Basic Fatihah.

      “The western Muslims are looking at us Malaysians and Indonesians because we are always open to adopting new concepts that observe the Islamic requirements — as long as they are beautiful. We love looking pretty,” says Sumayyah.

Message of hope

     Sumayyah believes her course of life would have been different had she not pursued Islam as deeply as she did then. “I would actually have just remained a merchant banker and be consumed by what this world can offer me,” she says.

      Hoping for her venture to be successful, Sumayyah thinks her teaching career and designing instinct will likely merge in the future.

     Though having researched the industry for years and her designs are on the brink of commercialisation, Sumayyah refuses to call herself an expert on Muslim fashion.

     “I am just a regular person looking for answers, so my version of Islam is very personal and only related to my very limited perspective based on my personal experiences,” she says. (T/P09/E1).

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).