by Nura Ahmed

Michaela Corning, Founder and CEO of Barakah Beauty Collective, created a female-led, female-only beauty and wellness space specifically for Muslim women – the only one of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. Now an essential hub for community, healing and laughter, the road to founding Barakah Beauty Collective has taken unexpected twists and turns.

Corning was born in eastern Washington before settling on Vashon Island shortly thereafter. She was introduced to Islam when she took a Middle Eastern history class in high school while doing Starting running. She attended the University of Washington, where she earned two Bachelor of Arts degrees in Linguistics and Spanish. She was intrigued by Islam after completing her undergraduate degree, which led her to convert to Islam in 1999. “The Quran was a linguistic miracle,” she said.

In 1999, with her newfound faith, she was also working at her first job after college. Shortly after making the decision to convert – six months before 9/11 – she started wearing the hijab, only for her world to change the day after 9/11. “I didn’t even watch the news on the day of 9/11. It wasn’t until I came back to work the next day that everything started to change for me,” she said. “I was just the white woman with the hijab. Now suddenly I’m this Muslim woman.

Corning started her first corporate America job in sales and customer service shortly after graduating from college in 1998, but not everyone liked her. “Nobody likes assertive women. Especially if you are an assertive Muslim woman,” she explained.

Starting her corporate job while wearing the hijab, it was difficult for her to find clothing modest enough and culturally acceptable to wear to work. In the early 2000s, modest fashion options for Muslim women were limited. This inspired her to create her own fashion brand, Al-Andalus, which focused on making modest clothing for Muslim women and other communities who prioritize modesty.

In the early 2000s, Corning owned one of the few modest fashion brands in the United States. As an artist herself, she first started selling clothes that she made herself, and it wasn’t until 2009 that she started importing clothes from Kuwait, a country with a mixture of both Westernized and Islamic style. “I asked people in Dubai where they got their style from, and they said they copied Kuwait,” Corning said.

Then and still today, the typical representation of modest fashion brands tended to be thin Arabs in their twenties and white Arabs of passage. “I wanted to fight that image when I started my business,” Corning explained.

She began to feature Muslim women who were underrepresented in the fashion industry, including older women, tall women, black Muslim women and converts – people who are not normally seen as the idealistic version of the Muslim woman. She used her brand to challenge the traditional image of what a Muslim woman is, which many modest fashion brands perpetuated and still perpetuate. She saw how it played out in her own experience as a white Muslim convert. “Islam is for all cultures and all peoples. He’s not asking us to change who we are, as long as they’re not against Islam,” Corning explained. She knew representation was important and made sure to uplift Muslim women who are not normally in the spotlight.

In 2010, Al-Andalus opened a storefront in Greenwood, hiring young Muslim women from the community. She hired women from all walks of life and made sure the most underrepresented groups were catered for in her store. She closed the store in 2013 because it had become too much to handle while having a full-time job. “When the girls heard that I had closed the store, they cried. Only because they wanted to be in a Muslim space,” Corning said.

Meanwhile, Corning continued to work in corporate America, frustrated by the misconception that outspoken, assertive Muslim women were not acceptable in the workplace.

In 2017, still working in a business, she decided to revive and rebrand her modest fashion business under her own name. She created a place where this old norm is abolished and that includes Muslim women that this norm did not fit. Corning continued to do the work it did regardless of what others thought. “When you do what’s right, the rest will surely follow,” Corning said.

However, sales began to drop at the start of the pandemic in 2020. At the same time, a friend asked her to create masks for the Palestinian Community Center of Washington State, and she made at least 2oo. Corning was frustrated with how awkward it was to be a hijab-wearing woman with the mask, which further inspired her to create the hijabi-friendly mask.

After introducing its first hijabi-friendly masks, Corning’s brand saw first-month sales of $6,000, and there were no signs of slowing demand. Meanwhile, his corporate work environment became increasingly difficult to bear. The company she worked for claimed to value diversity, which it didn’t: “They were incredibly successful.” She ended up being fired for being assertive, not just about the inherent racism that was happening there, but about so many other things about the workplace, and she felt she was seen as a threat because of it.

Throughout these spinoffs at work, she continued to make good money from her online brand. It was then that she decided to put everything she had into making her brand what she wanted it to be. In early January 2022, Corning needed more production space to meet demand. But the space she ended up renting became so much more than she imagined. She had a dream: a female-led, female-only beauty and wellness space near Northgate light rail station. It was then that the Barakah Beauty Collective was born. “It was the culmination of 20 years of being Muslim, being in the community, serving the Muslim community and in the corporate space, and having the modest fashion brand,” Corning said. .

This space is meant to bring women, especially Muslim women, from across Washington to a place where their privacy is respected, where they can build community, and more. It is a space where Muslim women from all walks of life can build a beautiful sisterhood.

The Barakah Beauty Collective offers services such as hairdressing, makeup, clothing, holistic medicine, massage and cupping. Her modest fashion boutique shares the collective space. Corning, along with four other Muslim women artists and entrepreneurs, work together in the space and help their clients individually while building community collectively. “Every day the women who come here leave this space laughing or crying,” Corning said. “It’s meant to be a healing space.”

Corning believes this space can create tremendous momentum to help Muslim women and women around the world invest in themselves and their talents. “It really came to fruition through Allah’s timing,” she said. “If I include other women-owned businesses, we can all benefit together. We are stronger together.

Barakah Beauty Collective has hosted 10 events since opening in January 2022 and is hosting an Eid Henna social event on July 7-8. Plans are underway to create a divorce support group for Muslim women, as well as a monthly social and support program. band. Additionally, it hosts a networking and coaching group for Muslim women.

Barakah Beauty Collective is located at 540 NE Northgate Way Suite B, near the Northgate light rail station. Follow her Instagram account at @BarakahBeautyCollective to stay up to date.

📸 Featured Image: Michaela Corning, Founder and CEO of Barakah Beauty Collective, has created a supportive space for women, especially Muslim women. (Photo: Michaela Corning)

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