Asian or Middle Eastern Vibe
This is initial research, not a wardrobe write up. I have very little familiarity with Asian and Middle Eastern clothes.
I already have notes for winter wear that potentially works as a hijab or Muslim head covering.
A long coat like a jilbab is extremely doable.
The photo of the jilbab with hijab in that article looks very European to me.
When they did actual research for Dress for Success for Women, they were initially going "I don't know, maybe the model we hired is too young to read as a CEOs wife." Until they got to the ankle length coat. We don't care her age, that woman is RICH.
It's part of why The Matrix does well. The extremely long coats of the main characters reads as "upper class offspring playing at living in a war zone" AND the plot is it's not really real anyway. The ultra rich don't dress to impress but wear things you and I cannot afford, including very long coats, and Muslim women looking to fit into Western culture and not get misread as oppressed pathetic creatures with no rights would do well to work that angle.
European upper class women will wear a head scarf "to keep their hair in place in bad weather" and a long coat. The head scarf may be translucent and floral, like stuff my German mother owned. Her mother was from a noble family that sold the title. My mother tended to dress extremely conservatively, like European nobility.
A hijab designed to look like an attractive accessory that potentially could be mistaken for the scarves European women wear in bad weather is potentially a means to dress in accordance with Islamic expectations while getting less negative prejudice from the west.
I think finding pieces Westerners would wear that fits in with what I'm doing that women from more conservative cultures would be happy with is doable. I've owned an ankle length knit skirt. It was comfortable.
I don't believe Middle Eastern women are fundamentally more oppressed or worse off than Western women. Muslims don't drink alcohol and their covered up clothing causes Middle Eastern men to interact differently with women in my firsthand experience and for me that was a positive experience.
I've written about that elsewhere. Yes, I'm aware women in Muslim countries may not be getting enough sunlight and are prone to vitamin D deficiency. It's the same in Canada.
Muslim men are just as covered up. Maybe you've heard of sand storms? I grew up in Georgia and the thunder storms are bad and frequent and impact local cultural practices. Like people would turn the TV off and get off the phone when the storm was rolling in when I was growing up.
If you live habitually with such issues, you stop consciously tying it together. It's just your normal.
I hope to do more research on Asian and Middle Eastern clothes that would be doable within the parameters of what I'm doing. I hope to incorporate silk at some point and I see no reason someone from such cultures couldn't go through existing wardrobe plans and tweak them to, say, make it all skirts and dresses and all ankle length.
There are already two skirts and dresses wardrobes:
I am hoping to start on trying to learn to write the code for the interactive "design your own wardrobe" piece soon.
I dress extremely upper class Western and read as upper class to the point that when I was HOMELESS in San Diego, I was repeatedly mistaken for a tourist. My sweatpants and t-shirts were read as "rich lady on vacation, clearly."
I wear midi or ankle length knit skirts as day wear when I'm not living in men's t-shirts and sweatpants.
I'm not saying a jilbab and hijab will be Western passing. But it will seem more normal to Westerners.
It looks like outdoor clothes for bad weather to the Western eye. Keep in mind that many women get cold easily and keep a sweater at their desk because they usually don't have control over the office temperature and it's frequently forbidden to have a space heater. If you are sitting at your desk, many people will not see how long your outer layer is.
See also Exotic White.
See also Hijab elsewhere on this site.