Modest Vogue Boutique Elle B. Zhou Has Huge Ambitions

Elle B. Mambetov wants to increase the plan of what modest style can be.

The Texas-born designer from a self-described “super Christian” spouse and children transformed to Islam 4 several years in the past, and rebranded her Elle B. Zhou fashion label from “Miley Cyrus swinging on the wall” as she identified as it, to protected-up and vibrant with an avant-garde spirit.

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She landed in Los Angeles after a controversial begin in London that bundled imprisonment for fraud, but she maintains her innocence.

In search of a new get started, in November 2020, she opened the Elle B. Zhou modest style luxurious boutique in L.A.’s Beverly Center, featuring her personal graphic print all set-to-wear, and numerous other brands from the Middle East, including Azzi and Osta (Lebanon) Raya Salloum (Lebanon) Yasmin Mansour (Doha), Kojak Studio (Cairo) and Okhtein handbags (Cairo). Rates are $2,000 to $50,000.

“After I transformed, my fashion started to change no 1 compelled me to wear a hijab, it was organic for me,” she claimed all through a current shop stop by of seeking to costume a lot more modestly. “But when I was hunting for something to use, it was, where are the outfits? Everything was genuinely affordable content, or all black. And I by no means dress in black. I don’t want to.”

Reduce to her boutique, a sweet shop of eye-catching models with tiered tulle night attire, wrap skirts and hand-beaded bomber jackets displayed on mannequins that demonstrate how clothes can be styled in a modest way, with sequined or tulle extensive-sleeved T-shirts underneath, or colourful coats on best, for case in point.

“It’s a how-to information for layering,” Mambetov explained, noting that about 40 p.c of her clientele is Muslim. “A lot of people today dress modestly who are not Muslim,” she included of the combine of Hollywood stylists, rappers and men and women “looking for a little something no person else has” who walk by means of her doorway on degree 7 of the Beverly Center, wherever her neighbors are Gucci and Balenciaga.

The Elle B. Zhou boutique is embellished in wallpaper of her possess style and design, with a pillar protected in Arabic textual content that has beckoned some shoppers who are amazed to examine their language in an American retail store.

There’s a sewing machine and seamstress on web page to do alterations or customizations for consumers, who can complete their seem with diamond pendants from Terzihan (Istanbul), Dreamboule (Milan) and Tzuri (Beverly Hills) — and snap up a handmade-in-Rome Ecriteau velvet jewellery box resembling big gumdrops. She also stocks Vanilla Pod, Rose Pellet and other scents from the Arcadia fragrance model by Dubai-dependent Amna Al Habtoor, a frequent in Arab fashion journals and the daughter of Dubai enterprise chief, Sultan Al Habtoor.

Expansion into a 6,000-sq.-foot space on degree eight of the Beverly Heart is in the works for January, so she can incorporate lessen price factors into her purchase, as nicely as men’s have on and caftans. She also programs to start a line of modest Elle B. Zhou swimwear up coming calendar year.

“All I want to do is make the planet inclusive. It goes back to my very first Ramadan, I wished an Allah necklace and there was nowhere to discover it.”

Now she’s obtained a person — by Dubai brand name Yataghan — for sale in her retail store.

Start Gallery: Elle B. Zhou Store in Beverly Middle in L.A.

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