An interview with the inventor of the Sports Hijab

A short while ago, I interviewed Cindy Van Den Bremen. Being the woman who invented the sports hijab through her company Capsters, she initially became an industrial and concept designer.whom I initially met in Eindhoven, but took a few minutes of her time and sat down to ask questions in London over brunch about how she came to invent the sports hijab, how she liaised with FIFA and what she's got coming next.

Please introduce yourself and whom you represent and why you make these headscarves as a non-muslim woman.  

C: I’m Cindy van den Bremen. I’m from the Netherlands. I’m a designer. Back in 1999, I graduated on the designer for sport hijab. I turned it into a brand in 2001. Now we are the world’s leading brands in sport hijabs. I did it together with my partner Karin Mastenbroek. The whole reason why I started it is that I stumbled upon a case where a girl was expelled from gym class due to her un-supposedly unsafe hijab or her supposedly unsafe hijab. And her mother tried to sow the hijab together to prevent her from wearing needles. 

Later on in court it was even demonstrated it was safe by doing a rollover. Nevertheless, it was the first case in the Netherlands where the hijab was forbidden due to safety reasons. So, in case the gym teacher opposes they can forbid the hijab in school. I thought it was kind of strange because they came up with a solution of a swimming cap and a turtleneck because that would cover the same areas instead. To me, looking back at those girls in high school you don’t want to look ridiculous. 

Where does the heat go? It doesn’t go anywhere. So, you get a tomato head. You are very conscious about yourself and most of the girls would skip gym if this happened. So, why can’t I come up with a solution since it’s not about the covering, it’s about the way the girls are covered. I’ m a designer. I should solve it. So, here I looked at the biggest sports brands.  So, I tried to integrate in fashion, in style, in material, in clothing.

So, I came up with four sport hijabs. Then I got a lot of publicity. I appeared in the news and on the radio and also international. Oh, then I was invited to write a piece. My Hotmail address was underneath and orders starting coming in from New York, from South Africa, from Malaysia. Here I really thought I was focusing on this Dutch girl, meeting a few girls in the Netherlands. But it appeared to be a universal problem, sports and hijab. That’s really interesting because then I thought, okay, I’m a designer.  I have an idea to solve the problem. I have a product. Let’s go back to the brands to start with. 

So, I knocked on their doors. I think this was 17 years ago so there was a lot of hijab discussion in the west especially the connotation of pressure, the women being pinned, forced to put on the hijab by their fathers, brothers or husbands.  Here I met all these outspoken, self-confident women who wore it by choice. This story needed to get out there as well. So, I also published a book. Actually, I made the book for my teachers to convince them of this other story. Nevertheless, they were not interested. So, later on during my graduation show I wanted a public surprise and people actually asked me to publish the book. So, I did. Two years later I published the book.

What was it called?

C: Hoofddoeken, which means headscarves in Dutch. It was a collection for example, explaining why women feel the need to wear a hijab but also stories of women that say, I don’t want to be [Inaudible] on my content. So, very short quotes explaining free choice. That story was not told at that time. So, I organized a travelling exhibition. I went very low profile through libraries and community centres. Here I’m not a product designer alone. I’m almost an activist. I felt an investor of free choice, also because I don’t wear hijab. I’m not a Muslim. I wanted to convey this message. I think it would be best if I do it because I did get the exposure already through my graduation project. So, it began to evolve more into a story of relevance and the relevance of a social designer being involved in social issues, actually trying to co-design with your user and coming to solutions that need both parties. Not only safety from one perspective but also the issue of the girls.

What I wanted to bring up was that you were inspired to do this based on a news story. You were already a product and industrial designer, so why move into fashion?

C: Because for me, it’s not so much about the design. It’s about the process and that is what I call social design. So, getting engaged with your user and involving them throughout the process. And ending up with a product or service or an idea doesn’t necessarily have to be fashion. In this sense the solution is fashion and I can design this. If not, I will work together with fashion designers, which I actually did. I involved people telling me how fashion works. I just learned it. And that’s what I’ve been doing now for 17 years.  If you had asked me 15 years ago if I would still be in hijab business, if I would still be talking about hijabs, I would have laughed at you.  How long can it stay fun? It is an amazing world. If you notice if I start talking about hijabs I don’t stop. It’s a very interesting world especially because I get to meet all these great women worldwide. 

This morning in this cafe I had a meeting with one of my heroes. She’s Shirin Gerami. She’s a top athlete. She runs triathlons with also Ironman. So, it’s a triathlon with a marathon. She represents Iran. During her daily life she doesn’t wear hijab. But when she competes from Iran she covers herself. Therefore she’s trying to break barriers for other women out there. I think that we need women like her not only to change perspective but also to have organizations think about what they need to cater to their new audience. So, she demands from them places where she can change covered.  So, it is very interesting. I love meeting these women worldwide. Especially now with social media the world opens up to me. So, co-design is a whole new perspective. In the beginning I went to the girls during my research on my graduation project. Later on when I started the brand I invited them to the studio. So, we would have dinner and after dinner we would go in front of the mirror and they would test and try my new designs. They would give feedback and based on that I would adjust it.

But now since there’s social media I have polls online. I have feedback. Every time you order Capsters hijab I put a note in it saying we value your feedback and we improve our collection through your feedback. We value your opinion. That really works. We get almost weekly mails from girls thanking us for what I did to them.

Even now?

C: Even now after 17 years and it gives me goose bumps. Then it’s the drive. So, in that sense I’m much more of a social enterprise. For me, the means is empowerment of women. That’s why I engage with all these women who have all these remarkable stories. The goal is empowerment of women but the means is the hijab. That’s not the goal, selling hijabs. So, that makes it a very interesting story as well.

Absolutely! Let’s go and talk about how FIFA got involved. You mentioned you worked quite closely with the FIFA president about the designs and so on and so forth. How did that involvement come about first of all? Then also as an extension of that, was there a call from football federations to talk about women’s teams at first or did they come later?

C: That’s an interesting story. There’s also a video on YouTube where we posted where you can see the story. It started actually with a TV show where there was a Dutch football coach. You say football here in the UK as well, right?

Yes.

C: She was hired by the prince of Jordan, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein to lift their local national team because Dutch women’s football is really highly appreciated. The level of Jordan needed to increase so he hired her. We approached her by asked if she could take some of our designs with her to again ask for feedback. We want the top level of athletes to participate in sports in the most comfortable way.  Therefore, we needed to know if our designs are good enough. So, we gave her some samples to test. They had a training camp in Amsterdam. We visited them. We went out there. We put all the designs on the table and I asked them what do you like, what don’t you like, what do you need, what do you miss. That’s how we came to the solution of the Capsters Football. Actually, this was interesting because we already started this process. Then there was a qualification match between Iran and Jordan, the female football team. And so, the whole national songs played and then the game was about to start and then the referee, he stopped the game, not even playing, saying you are disqualified because you are wearing hijabs. There was a hijab ban for 5 years due to safety reasons which really surprises me because if you look closely at football, there is a lot of men pulling each other’s jerseys and it is considering the same area around the neck. Nobody talks about the suffocation of men. So, here again it is about women and modern women. So, nevertheless, I did design a safety solution, that’s the problem we can solve as a designer. So, I designed a hijab with a closing feature, if you pull it from the back, it frees and this has been tested and approved by a typical institution of Germany. So, therefore, there was no argument on safety anymore and they had to change the regulations. Now, of course this is politics so it took some time, but I am very proud that we could contribute together with the help of the team with the Prince of Jordan we could accomplish that women worldwide are now able to compete in soccer and football.

So talk me through your product line.

C: So, this is my full collection and of course in different styles we have different colors. It all started with one design that looked similar to this, it was called the Aerobics and now we call it fitness, it actually had 3 stripes like Adidas. We send it in a nice semitransparent Ziploc bag; this is made of very lightweight mesh material.

What’s really nice is that the feedback we get from women and girls, they are used to wrapping the hijab around so it is very tight and very condensed piece of clothing on your head and also warm. Now, a lot of women who start wearing Capsters they had to get used to the fact it is not tight, it is very comfortable and it is lightweight so they keep checking whether they left the house with the hijab.

It’s a new sensation.

C: It is and the most precious sensation that was described by a lady in Indonesia, she said for the first time I felt the wind blowing through my hair again because of this mesh, so that’s really, really nice. It is a readymade fit and it comes in a variety of colors and these are colors and color combinations. Of course the bestseller is the black one but what’s interesting is that in different parts of the world there is different demands and I think it is interesting that I started co-designing with this local group of Dutch women, focusing on the Dutch case of gym class, getting it out there in the news, it appeared to be a universal problem and now we are a global brand we are also again focusing on local issues and we do that with the help of local resource. So, there we work with a network of resellers, 15 different resellers worldwide because they have direct connection to their clients, they give us feedback that is locally returned, it is really interesting. For example Runner Extralong, that’s a story from Malaysia, Singapore because in the Netherlands it was even shorter when I first graduated so it has already increased, it was even shorter because I wanted to be as close to the turtleneck and swimming cap solution due to safety reasons, you could even put this in from of your T-shirt, your cover so no loose ends would be around. But in Malaysia and Singapore safety is not an issue because the hijab is part of their culture and sport with it, you work with it and there is no problem. But they want to cover the chest area so they asked me to lengthen the front and that is a big seller in Far East.

What about in places like Saudi Arabia for instance, would that be the same considering they are extremely conservative with regards to women?

C: We do get orders from the Middle East, we have been trying to break through the retail market which is really hard because we are a very small company, it is very hard to believe we are a bigger sports brand so I think it is interesting now that Nike introduced the sport hijab in the market that we could hopefully break open the retail. Ever since the announcement of Nike we have been receiving requests for samples for our retail market which is interesting because now because of the news, women start approaching retail business saying I want a sport hijab, I want to buy a sport hijab here, do you have one? And now it becomes interesting for them to sell it instead of me for years I have been working top down you need to buy this because there is a demand because they didn’t hear the demand and now the demand is out there and there is recognition. So, I think it is a celebration for Muslims and Muslim athletes that finally mainstream brands are picking it up.

Did Nike not consult you at any point when they were going to…?

C: I wish they did. It is a bit strange, that’s also what we received from the women out there that there is no recognition for us as the inventor of the sport hijab. On the other hand I keep saying that it is a big celebration time that the big mainstream brands have embraced this because of the need and existence of this group that we have been working with for 17 years and we have been doing the co-design process just like they do.

Even though you are a small company has anyone, any other brands kind of caught on and said how did you kind of put it together and be a standalone company, is this true innovation? Because it is interesting to see because such a thing you have been doing this for so long and yet you know it has only just caught on as a trend at this particular point, it is quite interesting kind of to see like what the future holds for you. Like do you have any future plans and why you want to take Capsters and by extension like sports hijabs do you break into a design for like swimming for instance?

C: We cover everything. Of course I have dreams, I mean it would be great if we could add maybe a sportswear line because that’s what we get requested as well by the women and girls that we cater. And as a designer I would love to bring out more different designs on a more regular basis. So, yes, I do think there is a future ahead of Capsters especially now that market is breaking up. So, I think diversity that really could help us as a small brand as well because once the retail chains start offering the bigger mainstream brands the clients might demand diversity of choice of products. So, I think that’s where we come in.

I come from one of the top 10 design schools in the world, design academy so I think in that sense the innovativeness starts with good education and thinking out of the box so I did think I learned it there. On the other hand it is also being aware of it is cultural diversity, it is culture awareness is what I teach at the local university as well so I try to open up my students’ eyes for looking at things from a different perspective and therefore becoming innovative and serving a larger audience than just the Western market. And to listen more careful to the diversity in the world which I think is also needed in the federations or sport federations like FIBA now is still struggling with hijab while they are denying the right of really talented girls to play professional basketball. So, that’s what we are also working on behind the scenes to help them find a solution to lift the hijab ban.

Are you talking to them directly?

C: Indirectly. They have solved this. But what is interesting is that when I studied there it was not a city you have seen it, it was a city that you wanted to leave as soon as you graduated. And I was actually one of the pioneers who stayed, built up a studio there and social life and I think it is a very vibrant city especially now with the Dutch Design Week, maybe you should come back during Dutch Design Week in the fall.

I would love to, if I get an invite, I am there.

C: Oh, it is really amazing what happens there, it is like 300,000 visitors tasting design and designers, you have the fair in Milan but that is really what’s out there but in Eindhoven you get the taste of the future. So, it is really about innovativeness and sparks and it is getting a vibrant city during the week, I really love it. So, for me it is good climate to remain here as well as a designer and also because I teach there at the institute.

And finally what are your hopes and dreams for the future with regards to yourself and like Capsters as well, are the two the same?

C: Well, I am an idealist so if I take it in a broader sense I am sometimes blamed for being idealist and not a realist and I want to show through the brand Capsters but also through my studio work as a social designer that there is solution in everything and there is multicultural society or diversity shouldn’t be an obstacle but an inspiration instead. And actually to be honest when I work in London that is what I love most about London, it is so embracing the diversity and I think everybody can learn from that and should learn from that and that it is possible and that it is just a minority of a tiny, tiny, tiny group of people who ruin it for the rest of the world.

www.capsters.com