The story behind Hanan

Three weeks postpartum, sitting in the back of a car with a screaming newborn, unbuttoning an abaya I had paid a lot of money for and could not feed my daughter in.

I went home and looked for another one. Everything I found was either beautiful or practical. The beautiful ones had no way in. The practical ones looked like a compromise, and I was tired of being asked to compromise.

So I made one. Then I made one for my sister, and one for a friend from the mother-and-baby group, and then for women I had never met who kept messaging to ask where mine was from.

HANAN is that abaya, made properly. Cut long and full so it drapes rather than clings. Opened along the seam where nobody can see it, so you can feed your baby without leaving the room. Finished so that no one would ever guess it was designed around a feed at 3am.

It started in a hospital car park

My daughter was born in November. By the third week I had worked out that I could go almost anywhere with her, as long as I was prepared to feed her in a toilet cubicle, in a car, or under a muslin that she would pull off within about nine seconds.

The abaya I was wearing was one I had saved for. Beautiful crepe, lined, the kind of thing you keep for years. And there was no way into it. To feed her I had to take the whole thing off, which in a car park in November is not a thing you do twice.

Looking for one that already existed

I assumed someone must already be making this. Modest wear is not a small industry and mothers are not a small group of people. But every abaya I found fell into one of two piles.

The first pile was beautiful and closed. The second pile was open at the front, which technically solves the problem and practically means you are holding your abaya shut with one hand while holding a baby with the other.

Nobody had done the obvious thing, which was to keep the abaya exactly as it should look and put the opening where you cannot see it.

What we make now

Every HANAN abaya has a concealed vertical opening set into the front panel seam, closed with press-studs under a covered placket. Shut, the line reads as part of the cut. Open, it gives you enough room to feed properly, without undressing and without a zip anywhere near your baby.

Beyond that, we are quite plain about what we are. We cut long and full so the fabric drapes. We use weights of crepe, wool-blend and satin that hang rather than cling. We publish the flat measurements of every single style, because guessing your size from a picture is how you end up with a wardrobe of things you do not wear.

Who this is for

Mothers who are nursing, obviously. But also women who are not, and simply want an abaya that is cut well, made from something that lasts, and does not announce itself. The opening does not change how it looks. It is just there if you ever need it — for you, or for whoever you pass it on to.

Timeless modesty. Made for the way you actually live.

— [Your name], founder