Vivy Yusof: The Modest Fashion Mogul with Billion-Dollar Ambitions

Vivy Yusof has come up with an ingenious way of upstaging people who fancy themselves natural-born entrepreneurs. The Malaysian businesswoman jokes that when she was still in the womb, waiting for those nine long months to pass, she often pleaded with her mother: “Come on, get me out of here, I need to register my company.”

Ironically, quips like this reveal an intensely serious side to Yusof’s personality. “I’m so competitive, I even compete with myself,” she shrugs. The self-confessed “rebel,” who started blogging in 2006 while studying law in London before returning to Kuala Lumpur to launch a fashion e-commerce business, is full of witty one-liners. She’s also the first to admit that she enjoys ruffling a few feathers.

“It’s like the more you tell me I can’t do something, the more I feel like I want to. That’s why my parents said, ‘You should be a lawyer because you love to argue, and you love to win.’”

At FV Group, the fashion company she and her husband Fadzarudin “Fadza” Anuar founded in 2010, after abandoning respective careers in law and aeronautical engineering to pursue Yusof’s idea for a now-defunct marketplace called FashionValet, the focus has recently shifted to their two modest fashion labels Duck and Lilit.

The pair have come a long way since their professional honeymoon period as eager outsiders relishing the chance to upend the local fashion industry. “Thick skin,” she offers, alluding to the feature that helped her weather the “entrepreneurial heartaches” she has faced behind closed doors as well as a few public clashes with industry figures that have punctuated an otherwise thrilling “rollercoaster ride” in business.

The company she has built with Anuar, which today employs more than 400 people, started as a few haphazard notes scribbled on a napkin using a pen borrowed from a waiter serving them at a roadside café. The couple had been driving on a highway in Malaysia’s Klang Valley when Yusof had a brainwave for a designer platform, prompting them to pull over before she burst with excitement.

The decade that followed would be a steep learning curve for the entrepreneurs now approaching their mid-thirties. Though she nominally serves as creative director and he as chief executive, it is her distinctive blend of stamina and charisma that seems to propel the company forward when things get tricky.

“My husband and I are complete opposites. He cares about Excel sheets… Me, I’m more impulsive, cheeky and optimistic. Basically, I’m more fun,” she says with a slight air of mischief. “OK, ‘fun’ but still performance based. And stubborn. Oh, and patience is non-existent in my DNA.”

Remarks like these may sound like conversation fillers but they help reveal the complex character that has shaped her as a boss and informed her leadership style through good times and bad.

Whether fame found Yusof or Yusof found fame is up for debate but, for passionate fans and ill-tempered critics alike, her face is now synonymous with the fashion industry back home in Malaysia, especially in the very personal and sometimes private world of modest fashion.

For some Muslims around the world, modest fashion refers to dress codes or outfits that cover certain areas of the body using faith-based interpretations of modesty. The extent of coverage varies but, among some female adherents, it can include a hijab to cover one’s hair. While Malaysia has produced other successful hijab-wearing fashion influencers over the years, few have thrust the modest fashion movement into the spotlight quite like Yusof.

Working in the full glare of the public eye was something that proved fruitful early on. In 2012, pitching their first business, FashionValet, to investors on the Malaysian equivalent of TV show Dragons’ Den (also known as Shark Tank), she and Anuar won after going through several rounds, walking away with 1 million ringgits (over $300,000 at the time). And though her star quality wasn’t as obvious then as it is today, showbiz kept luring her back.

At one point, Yusof’s entire life became fodder for content after she signed a deal for a reality show that predictably framed her story as a female entrepreneur juggling the demands of everyday family life with the ostensive gruelling glitz of the fashion world. She admits that the title “Love, Vivy” made her cringe at first and that she lost control of the narrative along the way, but she carried on for a couple of seasons while it helped promote the business.

Many of her 1.8 million Instagram followers will have discovered Yusof on that show, but now that she has more control of her image, the influencer finds herself at a crossroads: “What if I go private? Should I really be exposing everything? What if I negatively impact the business?” she ponders, referring to the modest fashion labels she has built that have benefitted greatly from her intimate posts and growing social media fame.

“This brand is bigger than me now, but I don’t know whether I’d be happy [going private] because I like sharing [my life with others]. I have to be really careful with what I say and post though because there are repercussions now. If it were still just me, then fine, but there’s hundreds of families to feed with the business.”

Big ambitions

In person, Yusof is warm, witty and exceptionally high-energy. There are hugs at the outset and smiles throughout but, as the chummy conversation flows, glimmers of a steely character appear between the bouts of disarming banter. The way she peers at you to deliver a seemingly unremarkable question like, “what do you mean?” brings a momentary chill to the room. Then before you know it, she’s racing ahead with another breathless monologue and whatever gave her cause for concern seems forgotten in a fit of laughter.

If humour is a way for Yusof to inject some levity into otherwise tedious work conversations, then fun does seem to be an important element in her group’s company culture as well as the brand identity of its two modest fashion labels. It’s not every day that you hear of companies naming employee learning sessions after the madcap cartoon character SpongeBob or of fashion brands producing hijabs in the iconic Spider Man pattern or head-to-toe outfits in oversized Chupa Chups lollipop prints.

But look beyond these colourful, eye-catching capsule collections and it becomes apparent that most products offered by her brands Duck and Lilit are far more subtle, versatile and conventionally tasteful. Anchored in an assortment of headscarves, garments with long hemlines and high necklines and a range of halal cosmetics, Yusof’s brands may be characteristically modest, but her ambitions are anything but.

The aim, she says, is not just to build a billion-dollar business but to do so while “elevating modest women” in the eyes of the global fashion establishment and the wider public. Using seasoned ‘elevator pitch’-style language, she describes the goal for premium brand Duck as one where it becomes “the Tory Burch of modest fashion” and the vision for her more affordably priced label Lilit as analogous to Uniqlo: “the go-to brand for modest staples.” Both brands will one day be “global household names,” she insists.

Yusof declines to disclose financial figures for FV Group but the few indicators she does share suggest she may be on to something. Duck has sold more than 3 million scarves since the brand launched eight years ago. Counting merchandise from Lilit, which debuted in 2019, the company has shipped to over 75 countries including key modest fashion markets in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar and others with influential modest fashion communities such as the UK and the US.

Having built a network of 14 physical mono-brand stores across Malaysia and Singapore and two dedicated e-commerce sites for her brands as well as a loyal community on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, Yusof is clearly credible to many in the modest fashion sector and the wider industry in the region. But some market observers suggest her global ambitions may be unrealistic given her track record with the couple’s first venture.

“Well, I am ambitious,” she says. “I always believe we should dream for the moon and the stars because even if you dream of the most far-fetched thing, you’ll somehow find yourself subconsciously working towards it. Fear of failure cannot stop you from at least trying.”

In some ways, Yusof has already purged herself of that particular fear, having spent the last year winding down the company she and her husband spent a decade nurturing.

FashionValet, their e-commerce marketplace which sold over 400 brands spanning both the modest and mainstream fashion industries across Southeast Asia, had been locked in battle with much larger rivals until they pulled the plug in 2022 amid reports that the company was operating at a loss.

Though it was considered the local pioneer in the space, FashionValet eventually came up against multinationals like Zalora, owned by the Global Fashion Group, and, to a lesser extent, it faced online giants Shopee and Alibaba-backed Lazada. With competitors able to undercut its commission fees and allocate much more toward marketing, pressure mounted on FashionValet.

Yusof admits that the company lost its way trying to match Zalora’s vendor proposition but claims that, in the end, its demise came down to a challenging business model and the nature of the labels she was stocking.

“Like everywhere in the world, marketplaces are typically not profitable [in the early stages of business because] you’ve got to pump in a lot of money. So, I think, having worked with local brands that are niche or smaller enterprises, it got harder and harder for us to grow when we were dependent on other people’s lives,” she explains.

“I mean, if I was carrying the big brands like Nike, Adidas, Zara then I’d probably be fine, you know, but I was working with mostly artisan designers [from Malaysia and neighbouring countries], and as much as that’s a wonderful cause and I loved it, it’s really hard to scale.”

With many partner brands scaling down their business after the onset of Covid-19, FashionValet was left exposed to a “substantially diminished supply coming into the marketplace.” Ultimately, however, she says the decision to wind down the platform was “to focus on our [group’s] best performing portfolios — our house brands Duck and Lilit.”

Or, in other words, she and Anuar needed to extinguish the part of the company that was burning the most cash.

Yusof positions the move as a “pivot,” and while the local media largely toed that line, public reaction online was not entirely sympathetic. Criticism centred around the fact that some of FashionValet’s financial backing had come from the state, with high-profile minority investors including Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad and government-linked fund manager Permodalan Nasional Berhad, alongside private sector players Myeg Capital, US-based Elixir Capital and Japan’s Zozo.

To mitigate concerns that public money might have been spent in vain, Yusof clarified that all FashionValet investors have stakes “in the entire group,” which comprises Duck and Lilit, the two modest fashion brands that are now FV Group’s focus, implying that investors may yet reap a return.

Like many businesses, Yusof’s modest fashion brands were born out of experiences that impacted her private life long before they inspired any commercial venture.

“Before I started wearing hijab, it felt like the headscarf was for the [older generation]. My mum wore it; my aunties wore it. I felt like, ‘I’m a modern girl,’ so I didn’t used to wear one. I mean, I was wearing miniskirts back then,” says Yusof, referring to her student days in London when she recalls going clubbing and pixelating the faces of her friends at parties before posting them on her then anonymous blog.

“But I think there comes a time in life, when you go through your own faith journey — of course everybody’s journey is different — but I felt like I was ready after I had my first child. So that’s when I started wearing hijab. The issue I had was that it wasn’t easy to find [scarves I liked] or brands I felt proud to wear,” says Yusof.

The gap in the market that she was surprised to discover while shopping for hijabs in Malaysia was also apparent in many other Muslim-majority countries.

“Basically, there were either scarves sold in [outdoor] markets with no story behind them shoved into a plastic bag or luxury brands like Dior which only offered a small selection of really expensive ones. I was like, where’s everything in between? And where do people buy the rest of the outfit? Well, I can tell you that [in many places around the world] it’s not in the [stylish] malls or online retailers. You have to go to bazaars or Insta shops.”

“That’s why, to me, the modest fashion market is still like a white space. There’s still no leading giant in the sector on the scale of a company like [Inditex] — but why is that?”

The global Muslim population is now estimated to be two billion, according to a 2022 joint report by CrescentRating and Mastercard, and Islam is by far the world’s fastest-growing religion.

“So that’s like one billion women and each of them, whether they wear hijab daily or not, they need to own at least one hijab for prayer and [other occasions]. Why isn’t there someone filling that huge gap who’s living it? Why isn’t there someone who’s mainstreaming modest fashion? I guess that’s my mission.”

To outsiders in the West, it may seem like modest fashion has only recently started crossing over into the mainstream market but insiders are quick to point out that it has been a ‘mainstream business’ for well over a millennium across much of the Muslim world. What’s changing is that the market is going through an accelerated period of formalisation, industrialisation and globalisation.

One global brand after another has announced their entry into the category, with Tommy Hilfiger, H&M, Net-a-Porter, Primark, Farfetch, Asos and home shopping network QVC among those launching hijabs, or creating “modest collections,” “modest edits” or “Ramadan edits” in recent years. Nike, Adidas and Under Armour have all brought in modest activewear options and even Speedo, a brand synonymous with the most revealing of swimming trunks, has launched a modest swimwear range for head-to-toe coverage in performance fabrics.

“I think it’s great that these big brands are giving more awareness [to modest fashion] but I don’t know that they are going to focus on it. [Even though I think some of them] really do want the business, it’s never going to be their biggest chunk,” says Yusof. “That’s where I come in. I want to serve the opportunity [that they miss]. I want our brand Duck to stand next to Zara and H&M. Why not?”

With or without dedicated modest capsule collections, some global brands will continue to be highly desirable among a cohort of modest fashion consumers thanks to their scale, ubiquity, quality, exclusivity or brand equity, but brands like Duck have an inherent edge over them all — authenticity.

Some products launched by mainstream players have been applauded by the target market — often those designed or endorsed by a modest fashion industry leader — but others are seen as an afterthought or a novelty or, worse still, as unfortunate examples of ‘diversity-washing’. Even the best launches have been criticised for lacking in the assortment needed to build out an entire wardrobe.

By contrast, dedicated modest brands led by women with relevant lived experience like Yusof tend to offer fuller wardrobes while filling an important role in the market, suggests South African modest fashion influencer Nabilah Kariem.

“I believe consumers who share their values feel a certain sense of responsibility to support [dedicated] brands [and their founders]. They also want reliable modest fashion options all year-round so while they have learnt to layer and make do with what there is [from mainstream brands], they would prefer not to,” adds Kariem.

However, she cautions that, for some modest consumers, having dedicated modest brands is only as important as there are gaps in the mainstream market that dedicated brands are able to fill.

Either way, it sounds like good news for Yusof and her offering, which ranges from colourful eveningwear inspired by Korean dramas to specialty running gear made of high-tech fabrics.

The variety Yusof makes available within single product categories is another advantage. Take headscarves, where there are approximately 200 styles for sale across both of her brand sites, ranging from Lilit basics in plain chiffon at just under $10 to Duck’s silk hijabs embellished with Swarovski crystals and charms for nearly $100. Contrast this with many mainstream brands, which offer only a handful of SKUs in their hijab ranges.

But what about the growing number of modest fashion brand competitors using a similar playbook and showing at the various modest fashion week events proliferating around the world from Dubai to Miami?

“Many peers of mine [built] their labels from the ground up and are doing really well today,” says Kariem, citing Marwa Atik, founder of US-based Vela Scarves, among others.

However, “there are also many modest fashion brands popping up now that are relying on… the modest fashion customer to be less discerning than usual to keep them alive [just because customers are] starving for options.” That is certainly not the case for Yusof’s brand Duck though, she adds, calling it “the real deal.”

Kariem suggests that there is no better time for a brand with “top-tier” merchandise like Duck to go global. In a market that is still “extremely under-catered for,” she predicts, “there is likely to be many more [new players emerging] over the next decade.”

Yusof herself admits she is not alone in targeting the opportunity, despite calling the modest fashion market a “white space.” Among the early movers she describes as “the OGs of the modest fashion industry” are Melanie Elturk from Haute Hijab in the US and Dian Pelangi and Ria Miranda from Indonesia, whom she looks up to and is acquainted with.

“There’s also Kerim Ture from Modanisa and Ghizlan Guenez from The Modist who both Fadza and I love speaking with to share ideas and knowledge,” she adds.

Yusof may well have cordial relations with these entrepreneurs, but some are similarly pursuing the global market even if they operate a different business model. The Modist, which started as an e-tailer of global luxury brand edits before shuttering in 2020, has recently relaunched as a marketplace and, though most products are in a higher price bracket than Yusof’s brands, it is expanding into more accessible contemporary categories.

A more direct potential competitor is Istanbul-based Modanisa. With that firm’s founder Ture publicly declaring his aim to turn the e-commerce player into a modest fashion “unicorn,” Yusof is not the only one with billion-dollar ambitions in the mass market.

Alia Khan, founder and chairwoman of the Dubai-based Islamic Fashion and Design Council (IFDC), an organisation established for the development of the industry worldwide, says that “Modanisa has done a really good job [at] making themselves quite widespread and managing their growth, which is where the challenge is. They’ve [moved beyond the stage] where one would usually trip up.”

Indeed, Modanisa sells both private label and third-party brands to customers in dozens of countries around the world and has localised language sites for many of them. In 2019, despite a growing economic crisis in its home market Turkey, analysts cited by the Financial Times estimated that annual revenues for the firm were in the region of $120 to $150 million. Since then, it has invested in high-profile marketing campaigns like those with brand ambassador Halima Aden.

Another player Yusof may need to watch is Diajeng Lestari, founder of Hijup, particularly if that marketplace pushes more private label product or seeks investment to expand further internationally beyond its home market of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. There are also pioneering category leaders looking to expand and diversify such as modest swimwear brand Lyra.

If Yusof does find global success, then it will be in part thanks to her decision to pursue an opportunity with huge business potential, albeit in a complex segment of the market.

According to a 2022 report on the global Islamic economy by advisory firm DinarStandard, Muslim spend on apparel and footwear grew by 5.7 percent in 2021 to a value of $295 billion.

Iran, Turkey and Pakistan ranked as the top three countries by spend. However, in Iran, where the hijab is currently at the centre of female-led protests, the fashion market is already inaccessible to most international brands (though some goods are smuggled in via neighbouring countries) due to US-led sanctions over the country’s alleged efforts to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Globally, DinarStandard forecasts global Muslim spend on apparel and footwear to rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.1 percent, reaching $375 billion by 2025. But it is worth noting that the authors explicitly state that “this does not represent the actual value of modest fashion consumption. It represents the core addressable Muslim consumer market spending in the apparel category.”

That distinction is important because modest fashion is a market that is famously difficult to quantify — or indeed define. In Islam, dressing modestly is a principle that is often interpreted through the lens of the countless cultures, nationalities, sects and communities that exist across the great expanse of the Muslim world.

Since numerous other factors can also play a role in interpreting modest fashion such as degrees of religiosity, age and of course individuality — and since some women who self-identify as Muslim don’t subscribe to any of the prevailing interpretations in their respective communities — using the overall Muslim population as a proxy for the market is a blunt measure.

It is the market’s ambiguous parameters which explain why analysts at firms like Grand View Research take a more conservative view on its value, focusing on traditional clothing offerings such as abayas, kaftans, niqabs, jilbabs and non-traditional separates from dedicated modest fashion ranges and brands to arrive at a forecast of $8.35 billion by 2025, radically lower than the StandardDinar prediction. At either end of the spectrum, however, the scale of the opportunity speaks for itself.

Besides, Yusof doesn’t feel limited by the confines of the market anyway. “I want to make Duck a brand that even non-modest people want to buy. I want it to be that cool that it’s not just about scarves and hijab tutorials,” she says.

Yet for entrepreneurs like Yusof looking to go global, the complexities of the modest fashion market don’t end with measuring the opportunity. A growing number of consumers in today’s market have complex identities that inform their shopping habits.

Take Nabiila Bee, a UK-based blogger who has covered modest fashion for over a decade on YouTube and amassed a global following of nearly a half million people on Instagram. Born in Kyrgyzstan, Bee is half Algerian and half Russian with Turkish roots. How does she rate Yusof’s chances in the UK? “Personally, I’ve not seen another [modest] fashion brand here on the same level [as her brand Duck and I also think it] has the potential to appeal to a mass audience because what they offer transcends religion.”

In Birmingham, the city Bee has called home since moving there as a child, the broader market context for modest fashion is also highly mixed, consisting of British women who have roots in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Iraq, Bangladesh and Somalia among others — each community retaining and adapting some of its own clothing customs, styles, embellishments and colour palettes.

And though some cities with a significant customer base are more diverse than others, each urban market around the world — from Stockholm to Sydney and Mumbai to Montreal — has a different composition of communities. Within each of those are women whose interpretations of modest fashion range from eye-popping, avant-garde looks and colourful coordinates to austere traditional garments and outfits styled with understated luxury.

Individual style is clearly an important factor but, according to Bee, most young hijab-wearing peers of her generation in the UK and US are looking for “trendy modest pieces most of the time.” Understanding which macro-trends in the mainstream market align with or differ from those in the modest fashion market is just one half of the equation. Leading brands also monitor how those trends are adapted across communities and intersect with micro-trends within each country.

Despite the highly diverse nature of the global modest fashion opportunity, Khan of the IFDC suggests that there is a common thread running through it which provides an anchor for a business with global ambitions. “For this consumer, it’s about expressing what your value system is [so] brands should stay true to the values of that audience.”

Whatever the scale or speed of Yusof’s future international roll-out, how she plans to fund it remains a mystery. But perhaps the bigger question is: can Yusof simultaneously expand her product range and distribution network while localising her design and marketing in ways that make a Malaysian-born brand appeal to a critical mass of consumers across the globe?

“I think all the ingredients are there [but] it’s so hard to predict,” says Khan. “I mean, gosh, I’ve seen some really great work [from other modest fashion brands] over the years and I was sure that some of those were really going to take off [but] then you sometimes see it goes nowhere and it’s hard to figure out why. But I do think she’s got a good shot, I really do.”

To start with, Yusof will need to overcome at least one urgent obstacle: the limitations of her retail footprint. Having few offline or online channels outside Southeast Asia means that, for most international customers, the only convenient way to buy Duck or Lilit is cross-border e-commerce via the brands’ own sites.

According to Bee, gaining consumer trust at retail is key in markets like the UK. Some modest fashion customers “here are really hesitant shopping for pieces they haven’t seen in store so… brands need to build rapport with [customers in trusted, attractive retailers]. But if Duck opens a store [of its own] in the UK like the ones they have in Malaysia, that would be a game changer.”

Yusof has suggested that this is indeed her priority. “My real dream is to open up my own shop, or otherwise a pop-up, in central London and New York next to the big international brands,” she says, conceding that she may need to rethink the DTC formula she has relied on in Southeast Asia.

While the challenges of that business model, which include brand discovery and customer acquisition costs, have become increasingly apparent across the industry over the last year, Yusof says she is not particularly concerned about a much-touted “DTC crash.” “We’re pretty happy selling direct-to-consumer for now, but we’ve never shut the door on third parties who are interested. If there’s a good opportunity for collaboration, we’ll consider it.”

The last time she was in London, Yusof posted a shot of herself on Instagram standing in front of Selfridges, wearing baggy stonewashed jeans, a billowy blouse and matching white headscarf staring wistfully into the distance. The caption read, “One day our brand will be here.” When asked whether it meant she had secured the department store as a new stockist, she laughed and said no, she was just shopping. “But I am manifesting it, aren’t I?”

“I love circling around Harrods too. I see so many hijabis there but, me being naïve, a few years ago I emailed those stores. I mean, I don’t know anyone there. [To them] I’m just this girl from Malaysia so I was ignored but of course it’s all about networking and finding leads.”

Effective marketing will be key. Yusof says that she would “love to work with” women with global influence in the space like US-based model Halima Aden, Vogue Scandinavia’s Rawdah Mohamed and American athlete-turned-fashion-entrepreneur Ibtihaj Muhammad. “A deeper dream,” she adds, is to dress the likes of Queen Rania of Jordan.

Some parts of the Middle East, however, may be harder for Yusof to crack. She acknowledges a perception among certain consumers in key Gulf markets like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia of brands from Southeast Asia being less suitable because of differing silhouettes, aesthetics, trends or tastes between the two regions.

“Definitely, I do feel that stereotype [and customers in those markets] are also proud of their own local designers, so it’s very tough for foreign brands to shine and make it. That’s one of the reasons I choose to establish the brands in the West first. Like it or not, the world is still at a place where brands that have made it in Europe and the US are respected,” she says.

Prioritising Western markets first might actually be an effective strategy, suggests Khan, whose IFDC organisation is based in the UAE but who was herself born in Pakistan and raised in North America. “Remember, most of those customers in the West have family ties to some [Muslim-majority] country. So, they’re often sort of like micro-influencers for their cousins [and others] ‘back home.’”

Of course, the same dynamic means that many of the modest fashion industry leaders who have gained global success and fame — from models to entrepreneurs — are those living in Europe or North America, even though their counterparts across the Middle East and Southeast Asia represent the vast majority of the modest fashion market.

Does that concern Yusof, an entrepreneur based firmly in Southeast Asia, as she embarks on this crucial next phase of the business?

“Well, it’s like I have to work double as hard to grow globally,” she says. “[But] that fuels me even more.”

Vivy Yusof has been a member of the BoF 500 since 2022. Explore the BoF 500 community here.

Credits for cover image:

Photographer: Amanda Fordyce; Photographer’s Agent: Ksenia Maximova, DMB Represents; Photographer’s Producer: James Warren, DMB Represents; Photographer’s Assistant: Rees Thompson; Digital Operator: Nathan Perkins; Make up: Athena Paginton at Future Rep using skincare by Drunk Elephant and make-up by Glossier; Illustration: Marie Victoire de Bascher