The Adaptation of Modesty Concept in Sportswear Design for Malaysian Women

Abstract

Modesty sportswear design is an alternative outfit to fulfill the needs of modesty appearances while doing sports especially for the Muslim women. The intention of innovating modesty sportswear design for Malaysian women is to provide more options of sport outfit for their active lifestyle. Recently, there was an issue regarding the lack of fashion likeness of the current sportswear design in local fashion industry and an excessive attention towards the women appearance in public which could distress their moral and confident level. The objectives of this study are: 1. to investigate the problems faced by Malaysian women regarding their option of sportswear clothing: 2. to identify the important features to be considered in designing modest sportswear designs for Malaysian women: 3. to create alternative sportswear designs with adaptation of modesty concept to suite Malaysian’s lifestyle: 4. To offer a module/guidance to designers and Small and Medium manufactures in getting the right designs and cutting in producing women sportswear. In order to achieve the objectives, this research has been done by using mixed methods which are observation sessions at two (2) selected location to study the retail market and current trend, the face-to-face interview was done with two (2) respondents of designer and a group of women hikers, the questionnaires were distributed through online; forty (40) respondents and manual distribution which were thirty (30) selected respondents. The experiment was conducted by applying the criteria gathered from the survey. As a conclusion, all of the objectives had been achieved in producing the modesty sportswear design for Malaysian women. This awareness will help to educate and enhance the innovation in producing modesty sportswear designs in Malaysia fashion industry, especially for Small and Medium manufactures and designers.