Garnet Red Elegant Esdel Dress with Matching Scarf

Africa - Egypt

Garnet Red Elegant Esdel Dress with Matching Attached Scarf

Sizes: M/L, XL/2XL

Opacity: 4

Sleeve: Fixed

Elasticity: The fabric has no elastic content, however the cotton component of the fabric will slowly stretch to your shape (similar to the way denim stretches to fit the wearer).

An esdel is a modest dress that is designed to allow the Muslim wearer to don their esdel over their clothes and thus be ready to pray. They are most commonly associated with prayer at home, where you might be wearing something like pants and a t-shirt around the house, but need to cover your arms and legs as per Islamic prayer standards. For this reason, many esdel have a short rectangular scarf sewn into the neckline. Esdel are very popular in Egypt and other African and Middle Eastern countries. It’s common to see them hanging on the backs of bathroom and bedroom doors (similar to robes), where the owner can quickly and easily grab them in order to throw them on, wrap the scarf around their hair and they are quickly ready for prayer.

However, while esdel come in a wide variety of beautiful and sometimes busy colours and patterns, I find there are two significant issues with them: firstly, while they are generally considered a garment made to be worn around the house, sometimes our normal daily activities take us outside our homes. There are many jokes about esdel being the uniform of Mums dropping off and picking up kids from school. Likewise, they may be the most useful modest clothing to hand if you want to pop down the street for bread and milk, or to call in quickly at the family’s house, or a close neighbour who just needs to borrow something small. And even if you are just at home, what inspires you to dress modestly if your only modest clothing to hand is not visually appealing because the pattern is too busy or because your esdel has no shape and no embellishment to make it an appealing garment to wear? For me, all modest clothes should have inherent beauty so wearing them is a pleasure.

Secondly, the attached scarf can make the esdel an uncomfortable garment to wear for any length of time. While a generous enough size and shape to wrap around the head the attached hijab is often sewn to the side of the neckline, as such, the esdel doesn’t really move well with your body on one side when you have the scarf tied. In fact, tying the hijab often causes the garment to feel like it’s pulling on your neck or the weight of the garment makes the hijab slip back or around on your head. Alternately, the scarf hangs uncomfortably when not tied around the hair as it is off-centre and thus unbalanced.

But at Myriad Modest Fashion, we believe you can have modesty, style and fulfillment in your clothing all at the same time. As such, we stock only classic, elegant esdel such as this one, in a solid, deep, garnet red colour. It also has gold/multicoloured embellishments to provide shape and visual interest to the garment without limiting its generous size and shape. Importantly, our esdels have the hijab that is sewn to the back of the neckline the same as a collar would be. It is also an extremely long and wide hijab, ensuring that it can be loosely tied around the head, and thus will not pull on the wearer or move around on the head. Likewise, this long fabric at the back of the neckline functions like a cape, and the esdel is not unbalanced if you wear the hijab untied. This means you can choose to wear your esdel all day without your movement causing the hijab to twist, shift, pull or get in your way when untied.

So now you can enjoy the beauty of esdel all day every day, with or without a tied scarf whilst in private or in public.

Garment Measurements in centimeters (bust)

L - 101.6

2XL - 111.8