My Latest Obsession With Hijab

Ahh bawal chiffon..

So chiffon is an amazing fabric for a long shawl. It places beautifully with perfect creases and comfortable balance between being lightweight and not see through. But wearing long shawl sometimes takes longer time and requires delicate care through out the day.

I love bawal. It's simple. It's elegant. And it's dirt cheap. The problem with cotton bawal is that you either get the soft ones which feel good on your head but too thin and hard to place or you'd get the stiff ones which are rarely comfy. There is a good range of cotton bawal in the market but let's go to bawal chiffon. To be more precise, the heavy bawal chiffon.

Some of the good things about bawal chiffon are:

• It's not see through: This is super important. Unlike cotton bawal, the heavy chiffon does more than covering your hair. It covers the neck. No more tracing of skins when you're standing with the backlight on. It is also pretty breezy.
• It stays in shape for a long time. Depends on your initial placing, heavy chiffon really stays that way through the day provided that you pin it in place.
• It's less wrinkly than cotton. When you are rough with your cotton bawal, it tends to crease and stays wrinkly afterwards. Heavy chiffon is more durable to wrinkle. It's harder to crease.

When there are good, there are bad too. So these are what I find annoying with bawal chiffon

• Although it stays in shape through the day, the initial placing can be hellish. No matter how hard it is to place the fabric, do not use ironing starch. I might be an advocate to using starch on bawal cotton but with chiffon, it's a no-no. You'll ruin it's natural folds forever. So be very patient with placing your bawal. Once it is set, it will behave for the whole day. The peak won't ever fall flat.

• Chiffon is hard to crease but it is also hard to iron! Ironing bawal chiffon can be hellish. This is why choosing the correct type of chiffon for bawal is essential. Invest some time in getting the perfect-no-crease finishing by using steam ironing or be very attentive when using water spray.
• Chiffon stained easily especially with oil. When you stain your bawal cotton, you can rinse it off with water and soap. If you do that on chiffon, the stain mark would only get bigger until you wash the whole thing. And chiffon is sensitive even to the tinniest amount of oil like the sebum coming from your sweat. Once the sweat evaporated, the damp mark stays unlike on bawal cotton where it dries to an even colour.

So that's it... For what it's worth, bawal chiffon is amazing. It's not surprising though because chiffon is commonly used when making jilbab. So fabric is not really new to hijab scene. I'm just glad that there is a comfortable and stylish alternative to the comfy but see-through bawal cotton. I'm looking forward to having more bawal chiffon in my wardrobe.

This is not a product placement post. I'm just appreciating hijab and its diversity.

We're both wearing heavy bawal chiffon.

Adieu