Savannah Uqdah, twenty-six.

Fashion shoots, like French beaches, are not typically bastions of modesty; you don’t go into modelling if you’re shy of déshabille. Yet on a torrid Saturday in August, while mayors in the South of France were busy enforcing a burkini ban that has since been ruled illegal, Nailah Lymus and Jaharrah Ali, both hijabis (women who cover, in the Muslim tradition), were modelling at a photo shoot in Tribeca with The New Yorker staff photographer Pari Dukovic.

Lymus, a thirty-two-year-old designer from Brooklyn, is the owner of Underwraps, a modelling agency that she founded, three years ago, in part to dispel the received idea that glamour and Islam are incompatible. The fashion workplace felt exclusionary to her when she started out a decade ago, as a stylist and dresser. There were Muslim models, and even supermodels, like the Somali-born Iman, but the strictures of their religion were given no respect on the runway.

Jaharrah Ali, twenty-eight, is an Underwraps model.

Underwraps had the support of Lymus’s imam, and of her family. The name Nailah, in Arabic, suggests attainment, and, she told me, “my mother is proud that I live up to it.” Her parents were African-American converts from Prospect Park South, and the women in her family gave her a template for sartorial self-expression. She describes her mother’s style as “Islamic folksy: flowy dresses, lots of layers, chunky gemstones.” One of her two older sisters was “a Muslim tomboy” who wore her hijab with jeans. The other is a Chanel aficionado. Lymus herself projects African-inflected, regal panache—with a Brooklyn attitude. “I have a very strong personality,” she said; it’s a quality that she looks for in her models.

Nailah Lymus is the founder of the modelling agency Underwraps.

In private and at work, Lymus adheres to the principle of adab. “It describes your demeanor,” she explained. “We don’t expose our hair or skin, yet it’s more about how you comport yourself than what you wear. There are very few dress guidelines in the Koran. The more conservative styles of covering”—the burka, the abaya, and the full-face veil called the niqab—“are not mandatory.” Modest does not have to mean timid. Flamboyant color and embellishment are the signatures of Lymus’s clothing label, Amirah Creations: “My taste,” she said, “runs to jazzy.”

Muslims spend more than two hundred and sixty-six billion dollars a year on fashion, according to a Thomson Reuters report. Some British hijabis interviewed by Reina Lewis, a professor at the London College of Fashion, told her that they “consciously use style to challenge stigma: they hope that being visibly fashionable will help non-Muslims recognize them as part of the modern world.” Lymus seems more concerned with the way the stigma is internalized. This summer, she was a counsellor at a camp for Muslim girls, where she led hijab-wrapping workshops. “At that age, hair is a big deal. And they have all the body complexes that other teens do. It’s important for them to be comfortable embracing who they are.”

Jaharrah Ali.

Underwraps does most of its recruiting through social media, but Lymus also sometimes finds potential models on the street—she will invite a young hijabi with striking looks to a casting call. Extreme youth, thinness, and height are not prerequisites for a contract. Ali, a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two, is a soulful beauty, but she doesn’t have the figure of a clothes hanger. One of the models works mainly for plus-size designers. And Lymus herself, who often models her own creations, is petite and curvaceous.

Nor are all of the agency’s models followers of Islam. Of the seven women on Underwraps’ roster, four are Muslim. The three of other persuasions—whom Lymus calls “my modest models”—don’t cover themselves but are still discreet. “They might go out in a one-piece bathing suit, or boy shorts, but not a bikini,” she said. (Agency guidelines mandate that clients on jobs be provided with a single-sex dressing room, a full-length robe, and privacy from male crew members.) One of the models is an observant Jew. “I’ve learned a lot from stylish Jewish women,” Lymus said. “They modify designer clothes that are too revealing by adding sleeves. Sheer and strapless are okay—with something under them.”

Jaharrah Ali. Ayana Wildgoose, twenty-two.

While the agency’s bookings have been increasing, they aren’t steady yet; Ali has kept her day job, as a teacher’s assistant. But Underwraps models have been hired for video and magazine work; for runway shows during New York Fashion Week; and for the annual “Hijab Fest,” in New Jersey, a cultural event and fashion show whose motto is “Own Your Identity.”

Najah Abdul-Rahim, thirty.

Whether or not a model is covered, her beauty is on public display, and her job is to arouse desire or envy that a beholder transfers to the product she is promoting. How, I asked Lymus, does she reconcile that exposure with a faith that guards its daughters from becoming objects of temptation? Underwraps exists to counter the stereotype of Muslim women as “oppressed,” she said. “Covering identifies us, but it doesn’t define us.” ♦