‘I Did It Anyway’: Nawal Sari On Fighting The Status Quo As A Hijabi Fashion Influencer

The fashion influencing game is saturated these days. But over the last seven years, Nawal Sari has carved out her own niche, showcasing modest style with her own personal flair, and creating the Muslim representation she's craved from a young age.

Yet despite having over 250,000 Instagram followers, walking the runway for Australian Fashion Week and collaborating with huge brands on campaigns, it's not until now that she's been able to showcase a truly unfiltered version of herself that goes beyond the outfits... and her hijab.

Speaking to Refinery29 Australia, the 24-year-old of Lebanese heritage says that her newly-launched podcast Just Delusional is a product of her desire to speak more openly about issues of representation, feminism and lifestyle that she hasn't explored extensively until now.

So often, women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities can be pigeonholed into stereotypes or only included in certain projects to support a particular agenda.

"I've honestly had far too many experiences where I felt disappointed or a bit left out. I felt like they [businesses and the wider industry] like how I look but they don't like when I talk," she says. "They like to use me in the campaigns or do the work with me, but then once I speak about things that are in correlation with who I am and my experiences, which have shaped the way I've navigated my career (that they like so much), then they're not in," she says.

While the number of hijab-wearing women in Australia's fashion industry is slowly increasing, there are times when Sari is still the only person who looks like her in a room. It makes it harder to immediately speak about her experiences with someone who can relate, which she says is "isolating and really sad at times".

"It's led me to the point where I've gone what's the point of this? Why am I doing this?" she says of her reflections about being in what's a very cut-throat influencer landscape.

"You see people who are within the same statistics [follower counts etc.] as you or who have the same reach, but they're getting 10 times more, or they're being showered with so much more love," she explains "The only difference that comes down to it is how you look, and it's really troubling to experience."

For Sari, speaking into the mic means taking back the power. As well as talking about her identity and upbringing in her recent TEDx talk, Sari is expanding on these topics on her podcast, along with the process of navigating life in your 20s.

"It's the greatest experience to be able to just shift myself from letting people try to silence me or try to not have me vocalise things that I'm passionate about, to then just coming out and being like, 'Well, I did it anyway'," she says.

With four episodes already released, Sari hopes that the podcast resonates with other young women who've felt on the outer.

"The main thing is to feel like they [the listeners] have a safe space within their lives to know that there's someone out there who's probably gone through or going through the same experiences," she explains, "and that they're never alone in what they're feeling... because that's how I felt most of the time growing up in Australia and not having representation."

For Sari, developing a social media following has always fundamentally been about community, and the podcast doubles down on this through a new medium. If even a few women laugh, cry, feel inspired and less alone, Sari knows it's all been worth it.

"That's all I've really ever wanted to do... and that's all I could ask for."