Modesty is a phrase that’s been gaining momentum in fashion’s lexicon recently, with a $250 billion global industry and one of fashion’s fastest growing sectors.

The fashion industry has you covered better now than it has in many years.

Gone are the revealing fashions in which size 0 models catwalked down fashion week season after season. Today’s trends are more conservative yet fashion forward, they include a range from the sophisticated, elegant and demure to boxy skater style numbers.

Renown brand houses including Nike, Céline, the Row, and Vetements are showing long, baggy dresses and ankle-length sheaths, long-sleeved turtlenecks, and traditional blouses with below-the-knee skirts.

Fashion reporters don’t see this as just another quickie cycle trend in the fashion industry, but a more fundamental shift. As one writer for the New York Times recently observed, in an age of extreme oversharing and overexposure in the media and online, women are declaring their need to feel more protected and more empowered through clothing that covers more than it reveals. “The ‘naked’ look is dead,” the writer stated.

I’m glad that the fashion world now realizes that allure and beauty are actually more compatible with modesty than they are with the show-it-all approach thats why modesty is a phrase that’s been gaining momentum in fashion’s lexicon recently, with a $250 billion global industry and one of fashion’s fastest growing sectors. The future remains bright for modest fashion women around the world

A decade ago the shopping experience for the modest shopper was an exhausting scavenger hunt. Ever since I was a young girl I remember being married to a seamstress -or maybe two at a time- buying 2 dresses conjoining them into one, operating on jeans so they could become skirts, lowering hems, mixing fabrics, you name it a did it. Like me there were so many women trying to figure it out when it came to dressing modestly, there where never enough options out there. At least for now, women can feel confident in clothes that are both stylish yet don’t exploit their physicality at the expense of their personas. Today’s fashions are attracting an unlikely blend of cultures like Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others who dislike having their bodies overly exposed.

Ironically, while the skimpy styles were considered as a mark of women’s liberation, in fact the opposite is true. Too-tight, too short, and too revealing clothing actually box women into a defined overly exposed persona. Clothes that focus relentlessly on their body at the expense of seeing them as whole human beings diminish women. It is discrete clothing that provides women the space for to feel confident and secure.

In most mental dictionaries, synonyms for “modest” include “shy,” “unsure,” “boring,” “plain,” and “submissive.” That's totally unfair for modest clothing crowds, which can be elegant, individualistic, colorful, sophisticated, stylish, and confident. These are the opposite of “plain,” or “boring,”. The mystery of the hidden, and the increasingly rare commodity of dressing with dignity, also adds an automatic element of class and distinction to a woman’s appearance.

The style pendulum might swing back again to an overemphasis on women’s skin, so I’ll stock up now while the selection is plentiful. But I bet that women who are now discovering the comfort, freedom and sense of dignity through today’s covered couture will demand the growing market to keep these fashions available for a long time.