We recently connected with Gulnaz Rehman and have shared our conversation below.

Gulnaz , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Dedication, consistency and being present on social media. The most important one is support from your family.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have always had a love for clothing. I would even call it an obsession. playing with colors, fabrics , textures was in my blood since childhood. When I started wearing the hijab in2013 (head covering worn by Muslim women) my husband saw me growing more and more into this clothing obsession but now I was trying to find ways to look more modest and yet stay on trend. we moved to Dallas in 2014 from south Florida where I was born and raised. The Muslim community in Dallas was so much larger than in south Florida and so many of my friends and community members were always asking me where I get my clothing how did I style my hijab etc. One day my husband said why don’t you start your own modest clothing business. And here we are today after 2 years of being online and selling out of my house and 4 years with a retail shop. We provide women all sorts of hijabs (scarf that covers your head) and trendy modest dresses, blouses, abayas ,swimwear, accessories and more. we love serving our clients. so many of them reach out to us to dress them for special events march their scarves to their outfits and so much more. What sets us apart from others is that we are brick and mortar store you can come in and actually try on the clothing and match your hijab with your outfits which isn’t very common in our line of business. most women always end up having to order online and then face problems like the scarf not matching , not liking the fabric, color discrepancy etc. We know its an online world but women still love to go in physically and shop and we provide that to our customers.
We are most proud that we were able to last through the pandemic and snow storm which had left our store completely damaged. We are here and standing stronger than we ever thought we’d be all thanks to this community of Modest Now supporters.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As the entire world was dealing with the pandemic and that wasn’t hard enough on small businesses, Texas was hit with an unexpected snow storm. Modest Now was completely flooded. A pipe burst in our ceiling and that caused the entire store to flood and not to mention all our inventory , merchandise, and location was completely damaged. Just when we were barely breaking even during the pandemic here comes this storm. At that moment I didn’t believe we could survive. We had to shut down the shop due to damage. That whole incident taught me to be resilient. Us humans can bounce back if we believe and have faith in yourself. My husband was and always has been my biggest supporter. He mentally prepared me to get it together and we pulled though.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We started off small, we ordered in small quantities at first. We sold out of our house and then once the audience grew, we decided to invests our savings into the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.modestnow.com
• Instagram: modest_now
• Facebook: Modest Now
• Other: tiktok-ModestNow