She’s fashioning a platform to connect style-conscious consumers with designers

When Fatema Janahi’s family moved from their home in Bahrain to the United States, Janahi started noticing something strange. She felt like she had two divergent personalities—one that suited the small desert island where she grew up, and one that matched the stateside culture of her friends and classmates at Northeastern University, where she studied engineering.

“​​When you come here, this thing ends up happening where your personality bridges into like two different people, almost,” Janahi says from Boston. “And then it’s always interesting to go back during the winter and summer breaks, when you have to go back to this different identity and this different culture.”

Janahi found that she had to switch gears to match the varying traditions, social expectations, language, food, and culture unique to each place. But nowhere was the difference as stark as her clothing, Janahi says.

In Bahrain, most women (including Janahi) wear traditional abayas, long loose-fitting black gowns. Some women also wear headscarves, though Janahi says she typically doesn’t. Her outfits at home offer a clear contrast to what she wears in the U.S.: jeans, t-shirts, sneakers—a wardrobe typical of a student and young employee.

On her recent trips to Bahrain, however, Janahi has noticed a change. Bahraini women, including Janahi’s mother, have begun to embrace what Janahi considers more modern fashion, while still staying true to their modest values. The embrace bumps up against what Janahi sees as a common (Western) misconception about modest garments, and the people who wear them.

“We actually do see the beauty in our culture and what we wear,” she says, emphasizing that for the vast majority of women, it’s a choice they make, not an edict forced upon them. “But we also want to be fashionable.”

A lot of the younger people have even started coming out with their own brands, Janahi says, featuring white, embroidered, or otherwise brightly decorated versions of the traditional black abaya. “They’ve taken it to this whole new level.” Janahi herself was drawn to the reimagined abayas, seeing them as a way to begin stitching back together the two versions of her that diverge when she crosses the Atlantic Ocean.

“The only trouble was finding these niche designers when I got there,” Janahi says. The more obvious brick-and-mortar stores still only sold traditional black abayas, and there was no way, other than happening to stumble upon an Instagram ad, to easily search for these small independent sellers. Most of them are women themselves, creating these garments as a side hustle to earn a little extra income for their families.

Janahi, who works at Google as a technical program manager with a specialty in software supply chain and infrastructure security, saw an opening. Why not create a platform to connect these artisans to buyers—many of whom were already actively seeking out their garments?

As Janahi chewed on this question, her thinking expanded. Surely other women in the broader Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) region were looking for fashionable, modest clothing. And Janahi herself had been able to comb through the racks at mall department stores in the U.S. to find modest clothing that upheld her values without looking dated. What if she could create a platform that compiled all these retailers—from the handcrafted artisans back home, to the modest offerings from H&M?

That became the blueprint for Janahi’s venture, Palm. Still in its early stages, Palm will be an e-commerce platform designed to empower women to express their identities through cultural fashion and uplift local designers across the MENA region. Janahi’s business partner and co-founder, Alia Albuhamad, is on the ground in Bahrain, helping to scout out small artisans and designers to eventually sign up for the platform.

Janahi’s venture and her entrepreneurial spirit grabbed the attention of the judges for this year’s Northeastern University Women Who Empower Innovator Awards. The annual awards honor entrepreneurs for their innovative, boundary-pushing work. This year’s recipients—students and alumni from the Northeastern community—were selected by a panel of judges and will receive a total of $500,000 in funding. Janahi was honored among graduate alumnae award winners.

Janahi and Albuhamad see Palm as a way of pushing back against misinformed or outright xenophobic perceptions of Arab women and their sartorial choices—harmful perceptions that are still finding footing in policies in the U.S. and elsewhere. During the summer Olympics, for example, France banned athletes from wearing headscarves. The move was seen by athletes and human rights organizations as flying in the face of the Olympics’ calls for respect of religion and protection of rights.

“There is a noticeable gap in how traditional Arab fashion is represented and accessed on global platforms,” Albuhamad says. “Many Western fashion marketplaces overlook the nuances of Middle Eastern styles, particularly the needs surrounding modest fashion. Palm serves to bridge this gap by providing a dedicated platform that not only understands but celebrates the richness of Arab culture through its fashion.”

For younger generations in particular, Albuhamad adds, “there is a growing demand for modern interpretations of traditional garments like abayas and jalabiyas. Palm would showcase these modern takes on traditional garments to cater for this group as well. Everyone should be able to feel like their culture and values do fit in and have a space in this industry.”

The market is there. An early version of Palm—a searchable web directory of makers in Bahrain—has already exceeded Janahi’s expectations. “People are using it all the time, and asking to be added to it as designers,” she says. “It’s been amazing to see.”

For Janahi personally, Palm represents the best possible outcome of her divergent social and cultural personalities, she says. “I don’t think I would have had the idea if I didn’t have the experience I did. I felt empowered to solve this problem; to do something about it.”